
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 







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STEPHEN HENRY THAYER 
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Songs of Sleepy Hollow 



Other Poems 



33 




NEW YORK & LONDON 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

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1886 



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"14 3 



COPYRIGHT BY 

STEPHEN HENRY THAYER 
1885 



Press of 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York 



TO 

E. F. T. 



Long years ! and yet they seem like days, 
So filled with love's enchanted ways. 



These poems have nearly all been published, 
during the past few years, either in collections or 
periodicals, and I have thought it only fitting, at 
the solicitation of numerous friends, to gather them 
within the bounds of two covers, that they may be 
preserved for whatever they are worth. 

S. H. T. 

Sleepy Hollow, December, 1885. 





CONTENTS. 


PAGE 




Solitude ....... I 


The Nyack Bells Heard from Sleepy Hollow 




3 


Old Sleepy Hollow Church and Irving's Grave 




6 


In the Pocantico Woods . 




8 


In the Old Sleepy Hollow Cemetery 






9 


An Old Ruin at Sleepy Hollow . 






II 


The Pocantico in Winter 








13 


Great Temple of Karnak 








15 


The Fallen Shaft 








i6 


A Voice from the Sea 








17 


A June Song 








i8 


Haunted 








19 


" 'Twas Years Ago " 








21 


On the Banks of the Souhegan 








22 


The Death-Roll of Honor 








2S 


Just Beyond 








26 


Contrasted 










28 


Two Rivers 










30 


A Friend 










32 


March 










34 


Fare Ye Well 










35 


Death , 










36 


Faith 










37 


Matins . 










38 


" The Choir Invisible " . 








39 


A Serenade 


• 








40 



Vlll CONTENTS. 








PAGE 


The Secret ...... 42 


Uninterpreted 






47 


Old Hundred . 






49 


Parnassus. William CuUen Bryant 






51 


L'Avenir 






54 


A Medley 






55 


Flood Tide 






57 


Ah, Could we Know ! . 






58 


In Embryo 






60 


Contrasts— Twilight 






61 


The Waiting Chords 






62 


Foreshadowings . . , 






64 


Voiceless 






65 


Songs Without Words . 






67 


The Heart of Nature . 






68 


Sanford R. Gifford 






70 


The Blest 






72 


"Not Less, But More " . 






73 


One, a Maiden . 






75 


The Sweet May-Time . 






77 


The First Sorrow 






78 


Infinito .... 






80 


To F. A. H. . 






81 


Betrothed 






82 


Wedded .... 






83 


Presaging 






84 


The Maid of Another May 






85 


A Fragment 






86 


A Song .... 






87 


A Song .... 






87 


A Parting Song . . . 






89 


Carlyle .... 






90 


Divided .... 






92 



CONTENTS. 



The Poet's Song 

Age .... 

The Dying Day. To E. S. B. . 

Forget-Me-Nots . 

"And Give Glad Hearts Their Inning " 

Clothed Upon 

From the " Council Ground," Sleepy Hollow 

A Song Without Words . 

Constancy 

Thekla .... 

" Ah, No More is Love ! " 

In the Ravines of the Catskills . 

Garfield .... 

Heart-Possessed . 

Optimism 

At Length 

In Memory. F. A. F. — 1883 . 

September 

Unexpressed 

Indian Summer . 

" Ah, Lowly Speaks the Voice of Death 

Heart of Gold . 

Woman-Wise 

Love's Faith 

Broken- Hearted . 

Longfellow 

The Clouded Mind 

The Mystery 

1863-1883 — Greeting 

At Sunset. Songs Without Words 

Fidelity — A Song 

" Mute Thy Lips " 

" Sky Top " . 



93 
96 
98 
100 
loi 
103 
105 
106 
107 
io8 
no 
III 
113 
"5 
116 
117 
119 
121 
123 
125 

T27 
129 
130 
131 
132 
134 
135 
137 
138 

139 
140 
142 
143 



X CONTENTS. 








PAGE 


H. W. L, March 24, 1882 ' . . . .145 


The Flower and the Tree 








146 


Seeds, the Engineer 








148 


Victory . 








150 


November 








152 


The Old and the New . 








153 


"Give Us, This Day" . 








155 


The Unsent Missive 








157 


Washington Irving 








160 


Night-Watches . 








163 


Christmas 








163 


" The Dead Year " 








164 


" Abide With Me " 








166 


Nay, Touch Them Not " 








168 


Love-Bound 








169 


Newburgh, October 18, 1883 








172 


A Challenge to Winter . 








174 


Rest 








175 


Poet of Earth . 








176 


Grant . 








177 


Prophetic 








178 


Spirits Anear 








179 


Past the Portal . 








180 


The Soul of Art 








183 


Notes 








. 187 



SONGS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 



SOLITUDE. 



Wild waters of Pocantico ! 

Stray rivulet of wood and glen ! 
Thy murmuring laughters, soft and low, 

Elude the alien ears of men. 

O'er broader bosoms than thine own 
The fleeting wings of commerce glide ; 

Hid in thy sylvan haunts alone 
The nymphs of fairy-land abide. 

The azure blue of summer's sky 

Scarce mirrors in thy crystal sheen ; 

The lover draws his tenderest sigh 
Far in thy shadowy dells unseen. 

Along thy gently-coursing stream 

The huntsman, heedless, loves to roam ; 

The poet dreams his fondest dream 
Within thy solitary home. 



SONGS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 

Thou art well guarded by a host, 

For on thy sloping 'bankments stand 

Such knarled sentinels as boast 
A lineage aged as the land. 

No hardy woodman dare intrude 
To rob thee of thy ancient shade, 

Thy mimic cliffs have long withstood 
The furrowing plough and vassal spade. 

The wild thrush wings its reedy note 
Through thy lone forest, liquid clear. 

Whose answering echoes, far remote, 
Fling back a dim and plaintive cheer. 

No tone enslaved in silvery string 
Or sense-enrapturing voice is heard 

To match thy melodies, or sing 
A challenge to thy minstrel bird. 

Here sovereign Nature teaches rest ; 

The quiet mosses on the stone 
Weave o'er its silent, flinty breast 

An emerald softness all their own. 

The pebbly sands along thy shore 

Lie mutely lulled by babbling waves ; 



THE NYACK BELLS. 

The fringed fern and gentian flower 
On thy low margin make their graves ; 

And through thy valley's dusky shade 
In ceaseless murmurings, ages long, 

Shall mingle with the flowers that fade 
Thy endless infancy of song. 

O waters of Pocantico ! 

Wild rivulet of wood and glen ! 
May thy glad laughters, sweet and low. 

Long, long outlive the sighs of men ! 



THE NYACK BELLS HEARD FPOM 
SLEEPY HOLLOW.' 



The lurking shadows, dim and mute, 
Fall vaguely on the dusky river ; 

Vexed breezes play a phantom lute 

Athwart the waves that curl and quiver ; 

And hedged against an amber light. 
The lone hills cling, in vain endeavor 

To touch the curtained clouds of night, 
That, weird-like, form and fade forever. 

The sad moon bathes with silvery beams 
The hush of twilight-bated breath, 



SONGS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 

While fallow thoughts, unfathomed dreams, 
Weave mystic webs with life and death. 

Then break upon the blessed calm — 

Deep, dying melodies of even — 
Those Nyack bells : like some sweet psalm 

They float along the fields of heaven. 

I know not that their liquid knells 
Bear less of joy's than grief's refrain, 

Yet from their echoing spirit swells, 
Methinks, a melancholy strain, 

As if a throb from out the wave 

Had mingled with their airy motion ; 

A song from some fair mermaid's cave ; 
A sigh from some far depth of ocean. 

The forests add their sylvan lay ; 

The night-birds lend their plaintive rounds ; 
The perfumed flowers that fill the day 

Add incense to the muffled sounds. 

And now I hear a marriage chime, 
Commingling with responsive voices ; 

A festal song completes the rhyme. 
As heart with wedded heart rejoices. 

Then, Lo ! the shadows deepen down. 
And veil in nun-like darkness all ; 



THE NYACK BELLS. 

Toll slowly, bells, o'er sea and town. 
For death has hung its gloomy pall. 

Dark Fancy hears lamenting moans, 

And voices hush, and hearts are broken, 

And in thy knells are widowed tones, 
A prayer for some wild woe unspoken. 

Then, golden-like, along the west, 
A bright reflection lightens mine. 

And visions in my thoughts a rest 

That mingles in these sounds of thine. 

Now laden with a nameless balm. 
Now musical with song thou art ; 

I tune thee by an inward charm, 

And make thee minstrel of my heart. 

O bells of Nyack, faintly toll 

Across the starry-lighted sea. 
Thy murmurs thrill a thirsty soul 

And wing a heavenly hymn to me. 



SONGS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 



OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW CHURCH AND 
IRVING'S GRAVE. 



Two centuries have left their hoary trace 
Upon yon ancient pile of weathered stone. 
Triumphant church ! It stands alone ! 
Militant no more, nor of the present race. 
Its elder saints, called to celestial grace. 
No longer now their sins bemoan. 

No architectural fancy mars its wall. 
Nor modern beauty frets its artless mold ; 
The truth is plain, 'tis very old ; 
And as I enter through its silent hall, 
From faded recollection I recall 
The names its history has told. 

In imaged thought I seem to see once more, 
Around its homely porch and narrow walk. 
The sturdy youth in rustic frock ; 
And decked in quaintest fashion, as of yore. 
Are grouped the maidens round the outer door ; 
1 hear the ancient people talk. 

Their uncouth dialect, and gestured speech. 
Betray the lusty blood of Fatherland. 



SLEEPY HOLLOW CHURCH AND IRVING's GRAVE. 7 

A Stern and pious little band ; 
Their simple parson leads to pray and preach ; 
They know by heart the lesson he will teach, 
And crave a blessing from his hand. 

Alas ! the voices which I seem to hear, 
Are dreamy echoes of the silent ones ; 
I read the churchyard's dingy stones. 
The very names sound aged to the ear. 
And half the rude memorials disappear 
Where'er the sere gray lichen runs. 

Scarce distant from these ancient graves, I turn 
And trace the In Memoriam, by the dust 
Of one whose pure disdain of lust, 
Whose famed yet gentle life no marble urn 
Nor bronze recite ; but only hedge and fern 
Are wreathed about a nation's trust. 



The love a selfish world unselfish bears 
Is better left to memory alone ; 
No need of praise on mocking stone 
Where every passing eye in wonder stares ; 
Or, richly blazoned in the city's squares. 
Forsooth, to claim what men disown. 

Ah ! not the boasting shaft enshrines the man ; 
Time has no hour in which to knell the fame 



SONGS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 

Upborne by an immortal claim ; 
For it a bridge ethereal shall span 
The ages ; nor the wisest critic's ban, 
Nor aught despoil the deathless name. 



IN THE POCANTICO WOODS. 



What calm is here, what stillness ; every scene 
Is eloquent with rest ; the slumbering air 
Scarce stirs the whispering foliage. Here and there 
A glimmering ray glides, torch-like, in between 
The shadowy forms of mossy, mantling green, 
And here and there the rivulet's murmurs share 
The dreamful solitudes ; 'tis like a prayer ! 
And far within the forest's emerald screen, 
Liquid with music, floats a winged song. 
Borne on the vibrant odors of a thousand balms. 
The world is mute ; it has no blending tone 
With nature's symphony, which, deep and strong, 
Wooes the worn spirit from illusive charms, 
To breathe its speechless longings here alone. 



IN THE OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY. 



IN THE OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW CEME- 
TERY. 



The slab is crumbling fast to dust, 
And, slanting, totters : scarce a trace 

Of the quaint carvings, for the rust, 
Is visible across its face. 

Death's-head, in dim intaglio, stares 
Through vacant eyes, as if to say, 

" I'm dead, I'm one below who shares, 
With others here, the common clay." 

The name's obliterated, save 
A skeleton of curve and line : 

Like that within the sunken grave, 
It gives no imagery or sign. 

And what's the age ? Aye, age indeed f 
A long, long age, for none come here ; 

No heart has buried here its need. 
Nor lives a soul to shed a tear. 

No deeds by him were done for fame ; 
They all have perished long ago ; 



lO SONGS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 

Ah, writ in water was his name ; 
His life, his virtues who can know ! 

No trace is left ; nay, say not this. 
If goodness dwelt within his heart, 

Then all the coming age is his ' 
In truths that once he did impart. 

As nature's types are wrought from one. 
As spirit unto spirit breathes. 

As treasures pass from sire to son. 
So he, unknown, his own bequeathes. 

Somewhere existent, incarnate, 
The energy, the will, the life 

Of him whose form has met its fate. 
Is mingling with the endless strife. 

Somewhere his soul, exultant, shines ; 

In other beings fires the blood. 
And plans anew in fair designs 

To reach, at last, eternal good. 



AN OLD RUIN AT SLEEPY HOLLOW. 



AN OLD RUIN AT SLEEPY HOLLOW. 



Across the brook, above the bridge, 

Crowning, there, a steep ascent, 
Stands the ruin on a ridge, 

Shattered, like an old man bent ; 
Solitary, night and day, 
Old, how old no one can say. 

Empty, sacked from cell to roof, 

Sunset, through its naked squares. 
Glares with lonely gaze, as proof 

That none claim the wreck as theirs, 
Save the dismal bat by day. 
Or the tramp who steals that way. 

None its history can tell, 

All its friends are gone or dead ; 
Aye, it keeps its secrets well, 

Whispers from its rooms have fled, 
And the legends of its past, 
Mingle with its doom at last. 

Who were they that, round its fires, 
Clustered in the days of yore, — 



SONGS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 

Children and their solemn sires — 

Hundred years ago or more ? 

Heroes, or it may be so, 

In the battles long ago. 

Ah, if but the silent hearth 

Could discourse of other years, 
Or the rafters voice their mirth 
And their murmurs to our ears, 
With what patience would we wait 
For the tales they might relate ! 

Here, above the ancient clock, 

High along the chimney wall. 
Hung, perchance, the old flint-lock, 
Waiting for the signal call, 

Or the Skinner's stealthy tread. 
Listened for in nightly dread. 

Here beside the humble board. 

Sober-voiced, with silvered head. 
Bowed the old man, uttering, " Lord, 
Give to us our daily bread." 
Pleading, in his simple prayer. 
Blessings on his scanty fare. 

Haply pondered here of yore. 

Crooning o'er the swinging crane, 

Ichabod, of legend lore. 
Musing, but, alas, in vain. 



THE POCANTICO IN WINTER. I3 

As he fondly dreamt to mate 
His, with fair Katrina's fate. 

Many a merry eve, I ween, 

Rustic youth and lass have known 
Here, where now, alone, is seen, 
Desolate, the old hearth-stone. 
Many a joy and grief were born 
Here, whence joy and grief are gone. 

Ah, the secrets buried here. 

Of the unrecorded dead. 
Who, through many a lengthening year, 

Lowly ways of duty led. 

Could we read them, we might trace 

Lives that glorified this place. 



THE POCANTICO IN WINTER. 



The frost has clad thee in an icy shield, 

And thy quick throbs are pent beneath its fold ; 
Thy gurgling laughter, that through fen and field 

Filled with its ripple many a mossy wold, 
Is bound a captive in thy Winter home. 

The birds, blithe spirits of thy sylvan lair. 
Who o'er thy Summer solitudes would roam 

In winged passion through the scented air, 



14 SONGS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 

With plaintive lyrics, long ago took leave ; — 

As friends oft part, with tender notes of song, 
Whose hearts, alas ! are tuned to sigh and grieve; — 

And thou art left deserted by the throng. 
Yet in thy grottoed caves what wild delight ! 

'Tis only man who broods in shadow deep. 
And glooms his thought with melancholy night ; 

While thou, in thy unquiet prison-keep, 

Dost never cease to thrill its crystal wall 

With buoyant eddyings of thy pulsing life, 
Till thou shalt rend the bond that holds thee thrall, 

As some glad victor in a merry strife. 
E^en now thou hast a dream of murmurous Spring — 

Art fired with fancies of returning bliss, 
When balmy airs the waiting buds shall bring, 

And waxing sun shall drink thee with its kiss, — 

When veiling mists thy babbling voice shall dim. 

And whispering echoes mock thy lone defiles ; 
When hidden springs shall fill thee to the brim. 

And swell thy course to far Elysian isles. 
Time has no wizard wand to stem thy love, 

Or woo from thee the witchery of thy spell ; 
Thou art a child, perennial, born to rove 

Forever through the same enchanted dell. 

And thou shalt sing in thy low, pebbly bed 

Through age on age, unchanged by time's decay ; 



GREAT TEMPLE OF KARNAK. 15 

While wandering man in circling rounds shall tread 
The troublous earth, and, dying, pass aAvay. 

O, lend the heart, thou Melody of Mirth — 
When blighting Winter breathes its icy chill, 

And marks with barrenness the dreams of Earth — 
Thine inner joy, to light its spirit still ! 



GREAT TEMPLE OF KARNAK. 



Thou art not now ; a far-off age did knell 
A greater death, that marked thy lesser fall. 
Thou mighty temple, reared by Egypt's thrall ! 
What grandeur do thy silent ruins tell, 
Wherein a thousand buried arts do dwell ! 
O Karnak ! wondrous e'en thy mould'ring wall, 
Whose countless crumbling monuments recall 
The mystic splendor of thine ancient spell ! 
But wherefore name thy praise ! Forever more, 
As ever, thou art dead. Thou ne'er didst live. 
Save in the mockery of Truth, to score 
The spoils of false, despotic kings ; to give 
The tyrant's lash to cringing slave, or fame 
To glory, or to baser gods a name ! 



1 6 THE FALLEN SHAFT. 



THE FALLEN SHAFT. 

UNDER EAGLE CLIFF, LAKE MOHONK. 



About thy base its giant fragments lie. 
What power, what silence ; mighty solitude ! 
Through age on age, in towering grandeur, stood 
The broken, balanced shaft against the sky, 
Riven from thy battlement of rock on high. 
The glaciers once crushed through thy wild abode. 
The Titan thunders oft thy summit rode. 
These, it withstood, their ruin to defy ; 
But, ah ! thou subtle, sluggish dreamer. Time, — 
Stealthy of hand, mute-voiced, unpassioned, thou, — 
With patience, through a thousand years, didst steal 
Its flinty feet, with aid of rust and clime. 
Didst bend its massive form and hoary brow, 
And force, at last, the awful wreck to reel. 



A VOICE FROM THE SEA. 17 



A VOICE FROM THE SEA. 



Once, by the moon-lit sea we stood, 

And watched the shield of glimmering light 

That fell across the throbbing flood, 
Melting the shadowy folds of night. 

Far o'er the shifting, silvery sand, 
That every rolling wave re-swept, 

We heard the billows lave the strand. 
In monody that never slept ; 

And far along the sheeny deep, 

We saw the flying fleet of sail 
That cleft the swell, and seemed to leap. 

And scorn the threat of gathering gale. 

And ah ! the sounds that softly broke 
In ceaseless surges from the sea, 

Blent with a murmuring voice, that woke. 
To breathe an answer back to me : 

For there beneath the bending sky, — 
Sweet vision of a day that's dead — 

One whispered words that ne'er can die, 
Whose earthly image long since fled. 



l8 ' A JUNE SONG. 

Break thou, O purple waves, for aye, 
And lade the winds, and kiss the shore, 

For, all in vain, I dream a day 

Shall bring me back that voice of yore. 

Yet, yet, along the strand, alone, 

I watch the never-dying sea. 
And hear the never-dying tone 

From lips that whispered love to me ! 



A JUNE SONG. 



A heart in the June-day of Summer 

Had tasted the violet's lips ; — 
Had stolen from every new-comer 

The honey that lover-heart sips ; 
Had traversed the low-lands, the high-lands. 

To drink of the dewy sweets there ; 
Had wandered through near-lands and far-lands 

The blossoms of Summer to share ; 

Till, longing and lonely, — a-sighing 

For love of a love that was vain. 
For a bliss that ever was dying, 

For a joy that covered a pain, — 
It winged its far flight over mountain. 

It spanned the purple sea-plain. 
It sped to the lily-brimmed fountain 

Of the passion of Youth again ; 



HAUNTED. 19 

It listened for a murmur, a laughter, 

It dreamt of a fairy face there. 
It pled for an answer, once softer 

Than songs on the Summer-sea air ; 
But the voice was hushed in the gloaming, 

The form and the spirit were gone, 
The face in the mirror-font foaming 

Had melted to mist with the morn ! 

The June-day of Summer was over, 
The Autumn had withered the May, 

The bloom of the heart of the lover 
Had faded forever away ! 



HAUNTED. 



In a dim-lit radiance. 

Satin-draped, and marble room, 
Palace-walled magnificence, 

Splendor glittering through the gloom. 
Dreamily 
Sat a man of fortune favored, 
Musing dreamily. 

Time had touched, with chilling frost. 
Heart and life, and blurred their grace 

With its gold and bill of cost. 

Robbed of love his soul and face — 



20 HAUNTED. 

Love's fair art — 
Love, the child of faith and feeling, 
Dead within his heart. 

Yet, to-day, he, dreamily. 

Borne on Fancy's idle wing. 
Wandered back, in memory. 
Listened to the song of Spring, 
Maiden sung. 
Song of truth to heart of lover. 

Ah, when he was young ! 

And a face, it startled him ; 

Worn with grief's unwritten years ; 
Pale and patient, through the dim, 
Undrawn veil of time and tears ; 
Startled him ! 
Hapless face of love and sorrow, 

Through the shadows, dim. 

Never had he seen that face 

Since they parted, long ago ; 
Since the broken vow — the place 
Where she dwelt, he did not know, 
But to-day, 
Idle fancy, — cursed dreamer — 
Led him all the way ; 

And her eyes upbraided him, 
Passionless, unpleading now, 



'twas years ago. 21 

Looking, looking, not for him, 
Since the faithless, broken vow, 

Haunting eyes. 
Love's deep embers, — dying embers — 

Lost in wild surprise. 

Still her face, unveiled to him, 

Seen through Time's relentless guise. 
Haunted, aye, it haunted him, 

Seared him with its burning eyes — 
Tearless eyes — 
Ever looking through the shadows, 
Worlds of sad surprise. 



" 'TWAS YEARS AGO." 



'Twas years ago, my love, that we 
Within an old home-forest stood. 

And plighted hearts, and dearly wooed, 
And cut our names upon a tree ; 

Dost thou recall ? May's violets fair. 

And sweet arbutus wreathed thy hair ; 
The shadow and the gold-lit ray. 
Together danced across our way ; 

Beneath the dome of blue-built sky. 
The lofty wood, the virgin green, 



.22 ON THE BANKS OF THE SOUHEGAN. 

Bent o'er us like a mantle high, 

And made for us a welcome screen. 



Once more — full twenty years have gone- 
O Love, we wander hand in hand 

Here, on a fair mid-summer morn, 

Beneath the shade of that home land ; 

The names have sunken in the tree, 
Yet, true to its sweet trust, it keeps, 
Sacred within these lonely deeps, 

Their meaning clear to thee and me ; 
And do they tell thy love as when 
We carved them in the May time then. 
With May's arbutus in thy hair. 
And May's fresh violets in thy hair ? 



ON THE BANKS OF THE SOUHEGAN. 



The summer air is sweet with balm. 
The river like a mirror lies, 

Reflecting back the tranquil calm 
Of Hampshire's golden sunset skies ; 

The waters murmur on the same. 
Their melodies of ages long ; 

The hills, so often called by name. 
Still answer back the voice of song. 



ON THE BANKS OF THE SOUHEGAN. 23 

The forest trail, that, in the days 

Of youth I roamed, the sinuous stream 

Along whose marge, by devious ways, 
I wandered in my earlier dream ; 

And all the slumberous solitude 

Within the old familiar glen, 
Are as they were of yore, and brood 

Within my spirit now as then. 

I hear the sylvan voices break 

Far in the deeps of birch and pine, 

Where summer's winged songsters wake 
To thrill again with notes divine. 

I stroll along the pebbly strand, 
Or wander o'er the drowsy steep ; 

The meadow, lake, and slope expand 
In hazy harmonies of sleep. 

And on the grassy ledge I lie. 
Unmindful of the world beyond. 

Linked to the heart of memory, 
And sweetly cherishing the bond. 

I close my eyes, and up the stream 

Of life return, in fancy dear. 
To those fair days of youth and dream 

When oft I rowed the river here ; 



24 ON THE BANKS OF THE SOUHEGAN. 

Until, oblivious of the years, 

Afar through mists of world and time, 
A phantom boatman steers and veers 

His barque, like music in a rhyme. 

His form is lithe, his eye is keen. 

His song keeps time to dipping oars ; 

He sings with heart and faith serene. 
And leaves behind the merging shores 

He leaves behind the hedge and ferns. 
The sheltering trees and mimic slopes, 

As in his soul a passion burns 

That stirs his life with larger hopes. 

His homely craft recoils and shifts. 
Where deeper currents speed him on. 

Then down the broadening waters drifts, 
And rounds the point and he is gone. 

And he is gone for aye and aye ; 

He never more as boy returns, 
But now, in sober manhood's day, 

He plucks again the river ferns. 

A sterner world of stress and pain, 

A world of love, and thought, and strife. 

Of storm and calm, of loss and gain. 
Has knit his heart to other life. 



THE DEATH-ROLL OF HONOR. 25 

Yet here, in Memory's sweet repose, 

Where once his halcyon hopes were born, 

He sings his song of these, for those 
Who then were here, but now are gone. 



THE DEATH-ROLL OF HONOR.' 



No muffled drum beats o'er the grave, 
No shattered columns tell the story, 

Not one survives, of all the brave, 
To wear the crown of glory. 

No message from the leader's hand ; 

He wrote his last with sabre gleaming ; 
Then fell amidst his deathless band, 

A soldier's vow redeeming. 

What desperate honor there was won ! 

Alas ! no hero lives to name it ; 
Yet Spartan mother, for her son. 

Might clasp his shield to claim it ! 

Bring purest marble from its tomb, 

Unquarried through the nameless ages ; 

And, grave this last, from History's loom, 
On its fair, polished pages. 



26 JUST BEYOND. 

Such courage burns anew in death ; 

By it fresh altar-fires are litten ; 
And in its quickening, fiery breath, 

Fresh honor-rolls are written. 



JUST BEYOND. 



Through the forests I have strayed, 

Over upland steeps have climbed. 
Traversed tracks where sun and shade 

With a silent music rhymed, 
Through the lowly vales have passed. 

Followed under cliff and crest, 
Scaled the heights of summits vast, 

Mounted to the eagle's nest ; 
Touched, a moment, at the goal 

Which, ere reached, seemed paradise ; 
Then it vanished from my soul ! 

Then it faded from my eyes ! 

Now a wandering dream I've chased — 
Idlewild, or strange romance ; 

Now my days have gone to waste, 
Foiled by frowning circumstance ; 

Now a glimpse from cross to crown. 
Now a visionary heaven, 



JUST BEYOND. 2f 

Now a treasured world unknown, 

Fancy to my thought has given. 
Still with restless, anxious heart. 

Or with heedless, careless glee, 
I have dwelt from men apart, 

On the land and on the sea. 

Seeking that I could not find, 

Longing for the unattained, 
Straining eyes that yet were blind 

To the marvels never gained ; 
Followed, lured by many a form, 

Hidden paths, through gloom and night \ 
Battled passion, pain, and storm ; 

Prayed for calm and peace and light ; 
Onward, onward, onward still. 

Led o'er nameless shining ways, 
I have searched, with tireless will. 

For the crown of earth and days. 

It is mine ; yet never can 

Hand or heart possess it all ; 
Ever will it lead the van 

Just beyond my ken and call. 
I shall see its beckoning fire 

Upward through the shadows peer, 
Follow it from height to higher, 

Now afar and now anear ; 



28 CONTRASTED. 

But, alas ! may never know, 
Nor, with mortal sense or sight, 

Win the prize I covet so. 

With its calm of peace and light ! 



CONTRASTED. 



I knew them both, and could but own 
That both were fair and true ; 

But, ah, how different in tone — 
How wide apart they grew ! 

In that blue eye, and plain address, 

One scarcely saw, yet felt, 
What energy of gentleness, 

And quiet purpose dwelt. 

Her speech, with unaffectedness. 

Lit up her modest face ; 
And beauty marked her none the less 

For her unconscious grace. 

She loved the noble virtues best. 

And felt a silent dread — 
Not all concealed, yet unexpressed, 

For spirits meanly bred. 



CONTRASTED. 2^ 

And many a heart, when lowly bent, 

And tempted to despair. 
Has felt that her sweet presence, meant 

An answer to its prayer. 

Not passionless, or soulless born ; 

Yet shallow beings lost 
The deepness of her life, that shone 

Through sacrifice and cost. 

Then, on the other face I mused. 

Of a far different mould. 
Of peerless beauty — not unused 

To have its graces told. 

Her eyes were bright with fitful light, 

Or armed with scornful glance ; 
Her words were lavish of delight. 

Or heedless speech perchance. 

She plucked the gorgeous colored flowers, 

She loved the buoyant throng ; 
And even, through the anxious hours, 

She sang a laughing song. 

You'd call her heartless ? Could you know 

The secret of her thought. 
The hidden tears, the passion's glow. 

The purpose yet unwrought. 



30 TWO RIVERS. 

You would not lightly hold her worth. 

Nor pass her in disdain ; 
A spirit, giving out its mirth, 

Will often hide a pain. 

And I, who knew them, dare aver 
That both were fair and true. 

Yet, ah, how different they were, 
How wide apart they grew ! 



TWO RIVERS. 



Two rivers to the sea are bound, — 

The one a murmur through the vale ; 
Eddies and laughter — nymphs of sound — 

Dance and die in its wilderness trail ; 
On through the wold, the waste, the glen. 

Glad to escape the bickering throng, 
Borne through solitude, heedless of men, 

It sings forever its virgin song. 

Over its silvery, sandy brink 

The ferns and filmy mosses grow ; 

Daisies, wild, on its borders prink. 
And gold and purple blow and glow ; 



TWO RIVERS. 31 

Choired in the emerald heights above, 
Sing, with the music of the breeze. 

Birds from the tropical lands of love, 
Sighs from the far Hesperides. 



Two rivers to the sea are bound, — 

The other, vast, and broad, and deep, 
Whose surges bear incessant sound 

Of music from the hills of sleep ; 
Whenever the tempests sweep its sides 

It frowns defiance in its waves. 
Whose billows leap in mighty tides, 

Or moan in their mammoth caves. 

Ebbing and flowing, never at rest, 

It bears its freight from main to main, 
Angered by every stormy crest. 

Calm with calm of heaven again ; 
Mindless of man, forever it goes. 

On and on, to the sea, to the sea. 
Father of all the land bestows. 

Child of ocean's eternity. 

III. 

To the world the poet brings his boon. 
From haunts of the silent sylvan wood. 

From dreams of the shadowy noon and moon. 
From the deeps of Nature's solitude ; 



32 A FRIEND. 

His notes are tuned in a lonely strain, 
To the voice and heart of harmony, 

Yet to men, alas ! the song is vain, 
'Tis born in the germ of Liberty. 

Then a master song the poet sings, — 

It swells to the ebb and flow of tides, 
Strong and deep are its minstrelings 

As down to the sea its music glides. 
It floods, and floods the land again, 

With its voice and heart of harmony, 
Yet to men, alas ! the song is vain, 

'Tis born in the faith of Liberty. 



A FRIEND. 



The memory of a cherished friend. 

The thoughts that cluster round his name, 

Are blessed lights that fondly lend 
A lustre lost to common fame. 

To tell the genius of his mind. 

The beauty of his noble face, 
The heart that held it only kind 

To exercise each higher grace ; 

To guard as precious relics now, 
And oft, with faltering voice, relate 



A FRIEND. 

The sacred pledge, the mutual vow 
That death alone could dissipate. 

These bind the lips to service dear, 
And free the pulses of the heart, 

Till fancy, dreaming he is near. 
Reclaims him by its matchless art. 

In him the gentler virtues blent, 
With dignity of Nature's mould ; 

Alike his kindly spirit bent 

To Summer's cheer or Winter's cold. 

His charity was ever large, 

A student of the higher laws — 

He held it sacred to discharge 
The broadest service to the cause. 

He builded wider than the creeds. 
Nor cared his own should be defined 

His gospel wrote itself in deeds 
And kept its faith in humankind. 



33 



34 MARCH. 



MARCH. 



Mists inveil the earth and sky ; 

Tempests shake their angry sleets. 
Fierce with ominous lullaby, 

O'er the dreary, dismal streets. 

Desolate, forbidding days, 

Born of Winter's dying breath, 

Deluge now the lowly ways. 

From her melting ghosts of death. 

Voices, phantoms from the haunts, 
From the caverns and the keeps 

Of dumb Nature's hollow wants. 
Echo from her barren steeps. 

Wailing winds, in mournful tone, 
Unavailing, tell their pain, 

As if searching for their own. 
O'er the fields of Winter-slain. 

Yet thou art the month of tears. 
Broken-hearted, and we find. 

Through the ever-forming years. 
That thy sullen clouds are lined, — 



FARE YE WELL. 35 

That behind thy brusque disguise 
Kindness lurks, and golden haze, 

Breathing Nature's softest sighs, 
Weaving there her violet Mays. 

Ah ! thou heart of wild complaint, 
Mute regrets, and hopeless pain, 

Stay, ere utterly thou faint. 

Life and Love will come again ! 



FARE YE WELL. 



" I am going home," she said, 

" Ere the Autumn leaves are shed." 

And the gold and crimson glow 

Of the setting sun, burned low. 

Through her curtained casement, red. 

" I am going home," she said, 

" To the silence of the dead. 

'* Death, O shadow, thou, of life, 
Strife that triumphs over strife. 
Pain that masters meaner pain. 
Gain, from loss of lesser gain. 
Life that's born of life that's dead, 
Ghost of years forever fled, 
I shall know thee soon," she said. 



^6 DEATH. 

" I am going where the light 
Never fades away to night, 
Where the loss of earth and sense, 
Finds ethereal recompense. 
Where the heart of love and truth, 
Victor over orphaned ruth — 
Burns with a perpetual youth. 

" I am going," and her lips 
Faltered, as her finger-tips 
Pressed a lingering adieu ; 
And her eyes of heavenly blue 
Longing, looked, as if to say, 
" Fare ye well, I pass away 
To the realms of endless day. 
Fare ye well ! " 



DEATH. 



Thou canst not frown, O Death ! Thy sullen brow 

Is marble-cast ; thine ear is deaf and dead 

To sound ; thine eyes are blind, and thou art led 

By wandering Chance, nor knowest where, or how ; 

Nor smile nor frown can move thy visage now. 

To fill the cup of joy or pain. 'Tis said 

Thou hast no touch of sorrow for the bed 

Of anguish ; thou dost scorn both weal and woe. 



FAITH. 



37 



And, merciless and pitiless, dost change 
The purposes of men with frosted breath ; 
Dost snap sweet ties and gentle bonds of love. 
And in thy prison-house — the grave — with strange, 
Relentless hand, dost bind the soul, O Death, 
And cheat the spirit of its home above. 



FAITH. 



Yet, Death, thou art not victor. Through the gloom 
Of thy veiled face, like some dim-visioned height 
In shadow, dawns the spirit's quenchless light, — 
The vast reality of love, — to loom 
Beyond the shuddering silence of the tomb ! 
O Christly Faith, but lift, in gentle might. 
The standard of thy Master, and the night 
Doth melt in day, sublimer thought doth bloom 
And flower, and holier laws compel the heart. 
Till, uncompelled, all souls, made true as free. 
Shall hear, enwrapped, the voiceless, heavenly choirs, 
In unimagined glorias, impart 
The perfect song of immortality. 
The full fruition of divine desires. 



38 MATINS. 



MATINS. 



Sleep from my eyes had fled : Silence and Night, 

Two gloomy spirits, gave to solitude 

A double shade, until its darkling mood 

Had filled my mind with tremulous gleams of light, 

As, when a veil enfolds the human sight. 

The busy brain is quickened by a flood 

Of dreams, so Fancy conjured up her brood. 

That put all sober worlds of thought to flight ; 

And sleepless, and with vivid ear I lay, 

When, breathless, and from out the stillness shot 

A clear and liquid voice, an arrowy ray 

Of thrilling music, like a sudden thought : 

I listened, and again from quivering throat, 

O welcome song, the early robin's note ! 



THE CHOIR INVISIBLE. 39 



"THE CHOIR INVISIBLE." 



Sweet minstrelsy, that holds, and ever will, 
Dominion over men, thou wert not born 
Alone in visions of earth's early morn, 
Ere wisdom clipped their winged dreams, to fill 
With deepening lore the classic page, for still. 
E'en though the gods are lost, and grope forlorn, 
Heaven's angels brood wherever faith is borne 
In beatific prayer and song, to thrill 
The soul with imagery divine. 

O, teach 
Thou ever, Truth, (God's messenger) of light 
And love enwrapt, and angel-winged, nor may 
The dull philosophies of men outreach 
The glory of transfigured thought, whose sight, 
Prophetic, touches immortality. 



40 A SERENADE. 



A SERENADE. 



When the mid-moon is hung in heaven, 

When the stars are studding space, 
And a motionless beauty is given 

To Night, in its myriad face, 
When, hushed, like a whispered answer. 

The sheen of the silver sea 
Reflects the circling censer, 

In its journey of light, for me : 

O Love, then I haste to thy meeting ; 

I breathe, in the scent of night 
And the rose, the joy of thy greeting. 

Like the song of bird in flight. 
Like a voice from the stilly spaces. 

Thy voice I hear, and I see 
Thy form as a vision, with graces 

My fancy has imaged to me. 

To the light in the vale, in thy casement, 
(Ah, night, that woos me to mine, 

Deem not that thy darkling effacement 
Can dim my spirit in thine !) 

To thee. Love, awaiting my calling, 
I am borne on winged feet. 



A SERENADE. 41 

Where the vaporous dews are falling, 
Where day-throbs have ceased to beat. 

I list to the musical silence, 

I touch the tremulous strings, 
Till the fire that quickens from thy glance. 

Inspires my minstrelings ; 
Disdain not, O Vision, if thou art. 

Or form of Beauty, divine, 
To linger, to listen, would'st know not 

The love, the heart that is thine ? 

Not soft words the bosom may sigh for, 

Plead I of thy lips, to-night, 
Nor the spell, the passions that die, or 

The fervor that faints in light, 
But a love that never may falter, 

A joy that never can flee, 
Thine innermost being whose altar 

Within my being shall be. 

Now, over the limitless ocean. 

Away on the tide of life. 
Where the heart may dream thy devotion 

When thought has sickened of strife, 
I go ; and a troth, aye, a promise, 

From one who alone can be mine. 
Give thou, and wherever thy home is, 

My spirit shall mingle with thine. 



42 THE SECRET. 



THE SECRET. 



** I cannot sing, my heart is faint, and love, like 

some dead burden, lies 
Across my bosom ; yet no plaint my lips may 

breathe, or broken sighs ; 
For life, alas, has come to be a sad and reverent 

thing to me. 

" I know, I know the world is wide, and every 

breast must bear its own 
Of misery, and hearts must hide their secrets deep, 

and live alone : 
Yet, dear one, aye, and more than friend, a few 

short moments thou wilt lend ? 

"Come, Sweet, and in the wooded deeps, on yonder 

mossy bank, awhile 
The burning sun its glory keeps, we'll sit and 

watch its lingering smile ; 
Thy hand in mine, thine arm to brace me, while I 

look into thy face — 

" As in the autumns gone would he, with burning 

speech and strong embrace. 
Draw close a folding arm round me, and gaze, so 

deeply, in my face, 



THE SECRET. 43 

To tell his love ; his voice would thrill me so, that 
memory hears it still. 

"I cannot brook the thought ; e'en now it sways 

me spite of scornful tears ; 
How could lips mock in such a vow, to crush 

through agony of years. 
Or tell their empty words, to make the heart to 

trust, and then to break ? 

" Dear friend, alas, in those fair days, (it seems 

an age since they were born,) 
We gathered in the purple Mays, fresh wreaths 

that years ago were worn ; 
Ah me, sweet life of promise given, so soon to lose 

its touch of heaven ! 

" For Love is heaven's brightest star, the sun of 

every glorious thing ; 
Without it, joy must live afar, and hope can bring 

no offering ; 
Without it, thought is but a pain ; the heart within 

itself is slain ! 

" And O, my friend, our love was true ; up through 

the glades we used to wind, 
And there, for kiss his lips would sue, with ardent 

words, and undesigned. 
And many a twilight found us, still unheeding, on 

the distant hill ; 



44 THE SECRET. 

** Then, he was never false I know ; we talked 

beneath the chestnut boughs, 
And built our castles ; soft and low the breezes 

bore our equal vows ; 
We listened to the robin sing, and answered on as 

light a wing ; 

" You know it all, — the same sad truth, — and think 

lost souls like his, must pay 
The forfeit due to nobler youth, for garlands woven 

in the May ? 
Well, be it so, and yet, and yet, what solace this for 

vain regret ? 

■" For vain regret ! O, when the life, heart-broken 

all, deserted, lies 
At foot of some o'erconquering strife, when Love 

unexpiated, dies. 
And Grief, impatient, waits the end, with only one 

to claim as friend ! 

*' Forgive, dear heart, I know that tears from thy 

sweet eyes are deeply wrung ; 
Thou need'st not deem my woes are fears, dull Fear 

was shed when I was young ; 
My heart has all its courage still, and ills ! there is 

no other ill ; 

" Could I but deftly dream it off, this world of 
unimagined pain, 



THE SECRET. 45 

By some narcotic, sleep or laugh the banished 

heart's-ease back again, 
How light, then, were love's bonds, to wear or cast 

aside, without a care ! 

" This sorrow colors all my thought ; it deepens to 

the soul of things ; 
The senses are with spirit fraught, and nature feeds 

on hidden springs ; 
A heart is in the flower, that pleads as if it knew 

my inmost needs ! 

" I hear the softer breezes sigh and languish, play- 
ing their light notes 

As mindful that they, too, must die, e'en while 
their minor music floats ; 

The brooklet, in its lone retreat, seems oft to rest 
its rhythmic feet. 

" And I am come, at last, so near the ghostly 

shadow, that I feel 
Its touch, and know its hand ; the dear soft amber 

sunsets but reveal, 
In gathering pathos from the west, the sinking of 

my life to rest. 

" The rustling of the autumn leaves, the moaning 
of the autumn wind. 

The clusters of yon banded sheaves, are eyer bring- 
ing to my mind 



46 THE SECRET. 

That life is but a fleeting dream, tast dying like the 
sunset's gleam. 

^' For love is life to me, and O, the loss of love is life 

no more ! 
I murmur not, death is no foe, its dread with me 

has lost its power, 
And yet, I would that one should know my hidden, 

secret world of woe. 

^* I tell thee all ; for other ears my lips have worn a 

sacred seal ; 
To others, mine were idle tears ; for me, no other 

friends could feel ; 
I tell thee all ; and wilt thou share the thoughts I 

could no longer bear ? 

** And should he come when I am gone, tell him 

that I forgive the pain. 
Tell him I bore it all alone — my cross — dear Christ, 

it has its gain. 
For it has taught my heart its shrine, and made 

life's common ways divine ! " 

She .paused ; the sun, with after-glow of glory, 

tinged the slanting west ; 
The waters, from their distant flow, in cadenced 

ripples, sang of rest ; 
The whippoorwill, from the dusky sky, ominous, 

sent forth its lonely cry. 



UNINTERPRETED. 47 

She heard the chorus of the night intone the 

autumn of the year ; 
She gazed forth on the dimming light with eyes too 

sad for hope or tear ; 
And felt, low brooding overhead, the waiting angel 

of the dead. 



UNINTERPRETED. 



Within the vale-embosomed wold, 

Low droop the tasselled chestnut boughs ; 
Soft lullabies of sweet repose 

Still murmur, as in days of old. 

Deep in the sleeping solitude, 
Half-muffled in its ferny dream, 
The silver ripple of the stream 

Whispers its ancient interlude ; 

While, far aloft, the busy wren, 

Or thrush, or lark, in luteful strain. 
Flings wild its pang of joy or pain, 

In echoes, through the hollow glen. 

And here awhile I muse in thought. 
How, through the countless eons gone, 
The circling birds have sang alone, 

In language man was never taught. 



48 UNINTERPRETED. 

Thick sheltered from the common way, 
Who knows what airy spirit thrills 
The feathered throat, what rapture fills, 

Or tender vows inspire its lay ? 

Who knows the lyrical caress, — 

An art by man scarce understood, — 
By which the birdling's heart is wooed 

To Love's delirium of bliss ? 

Who knows the sadness that it sings ? 

Its chidings to its lover-mate ? 

Or fond reply, or scornful hate 
Marked in the flutter of its wings ? — 

What sighs intone its music so ? 

What passions tremble in its song ? 

What questionings of right or wrong 
Impel its answer, "Yes " or " No " ? 

What code of wisdom teaches it ? 

What yearnings fill its aching breast ? 

What glory of celestial rest, 
Eternal, in its soul is lit ? 

Who knows, ah ! who ? We can but guess 

An inly answer, as we sing, 

Or think, a vain imagining, 
But all without is nothingness. 



OLD HUNDRED. 49 

Yet, might I know, — or foul, or fair, 
Whatever fortune wins the day, — 
That birds would fill my wandering way 

With their wild songs — I would not care. 



OLD HUNDRED. 
1776-1876. 



The nation's aged Century sat 

Alone ; the cold chills crept within 

His veins ; his shrivelled form, once fat 
And round, had shrunk to bone and skin. 

His mind was tenantless of thought ; 

His friends, who once had served him true, 
Had — one by one — departing, sought 

The promised favors of the new. 

A hundred years had crowned with frost. 
His hollow temples ; while the blows 

Of countless battles, won and lost. 

With treacherous friends and noble foes. 

Were stamped upon his ancient breast. 
Whose glories soon would fade in gloom ; 

Their noisy echoes sink to rest 
In history's dim ancestral tomb. 



50 



OLD HUNDRED. 



His wasted features, grim and gaunt, 

Like frightful crags and caverns, frowned 

On every sight. Not hungry want, 

But yet, some brooding fate, had bound 

In withering grasp his wrinkled face ; 

Had lit with vacant stare his eye. 
'Twas plain the old man's earthly race 

Was run, and he was doomed to die. 

The candle to the socket spent. 

Now flickering, gasped its feeble breath ; 
While spectral shadows came and went, 

Like phantom images of death. 

The fire had deadened on his hearth. 
The embers shed a pallid glow ; 

Like refuse from the after-math, 
The ashes lay in heaps below. 

Adown the dingy chimney-flue. 

The bass-voiced tempest sounded near, 

And blent with shriller winds that blew 
Their wailings to the old man's ear. 

He heard them not, till, from afar, 

There came the crash of mighty sounds ; 

The very heavens seemed to jar. 

The earth to wheel in swifter rounds. 



PARNASSUS. 51 

Ten thousand bells peal through the sky \ 
Ten thousand thund'ring cannon roar ! 

What means yon wildly swelling cry, 

That echoes back from mount to shore ? 

Once more the Centenarian starts ; 

Through every quiv'ring nerve and limb 
He feels the deadly pang that darts ; 

His tottering feet fail under him. 

Once more his eye peers through the night, 
Through which a lightning flash is shed ; 

A new-born Century looms in sight ! 

Old man ? 0/d man ? He's stark and dead I 



PARNASSUS. 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Obiit, June 12, 1878. 



A maiden's song to the mountain air 
Was carolled along from height to height, 
A minstrel of love on its musical flight. 
To free the heart from its lonely lair ; 
It led it astray, like a child at play, 
It wove it a dream by a forest stream, 
Like a bird on the wing to its tropical spring, 
From its nest on the crest of the mountain. 



52 PARNASSUS. 

The song was wafted afar and away — 

A faintly murmuring undertone — 

Till through the woods it wandered alone. 

It rivalled the brook in its roundelay ; 

It sped from the glen to the haunts of men, 

And touched the spirit of those who would hear it, 

And it melted to song the din of the throng, — 

This lone siren-voice from the mountain. 

The fern and the flower were in the song. 
The heart of the plaintive pine was sighing 
With winds that on dizzy cliffs were dying. 
And the odors of summer were borne along 
With sylvan loves laden. The song of the maiden 
Was, " Come to the mountain, to its cool, mossy foun- 
tain, 
From city and sea, O, come and be free ! 
On the hoary-crowned heights of the mountain." 

Then the weary-worn waifs from sickly climes. 
The slaves from the dingy delves of earth, 
The foolish fairies of fashion and mirth, 
Caught up the mountain-maiden's rhymes. 
And spreading wings for the heavenly springs, 
They floated away on the mystic lay, 
Where sunlight is born, in the golden morn. 
To the skyey peaks of the mountain. 

Alas ! in vain, by caverns and ledges, 
The wanderers followed the luring note 



PARNASSUS, 53 

Of the song they heard, so far remote, 

From the fair maid's lips ; 'neath rifts and ridges 

They chased the gleam of the forest stream. 

They hearkened again for the murmurous strain, 

But it died away like the dying day, 

In the fasts of the trackless mountain. 

One only, whose spirit was steeped in light, 

A poet who strayed from the motley throng. 

Drank deep of the maiden's matchless song. 

As it echoed from a shadowy height ; 

And he followed the theme through many a dream. 

That led him afar by the light of a star, 

'Neath a lofty crest to the maiden's rest. 

By the fall of a virginal fountain. 

And he wooed the maiden with her native dower ; 
While he rhymed of forest and mossy cave. 
Till his heart was full of the love she gave ; 
And he wove her wreaths of fern and of flower — 
With a poet's vow he circled her brow. 
For better or worse, in immortal verse, 
In the solitude of the mountain. 



54 l'avenir. 



L'AVENIR. 



My ship is launched on the ocean tides. 
With its silver-sail unfurled ; 

Its glistening keel over fathoms glides, 
Bound on to the underworld. 

It sails to the far Hesperides, 

To magical gardens, where 
The gold fruit of the Orient trees 

Gleams in the Orient air. 

Its banners wave on the wind-swept sea, 
And I watch its spectral spars 

Float down the bending horizon for me, 
Emblazed in the morning bars. 

I know it will ride the swelling gale, 

I dream of the mystic days, 
When again shall loom its silver-sail 

From out the Orient haze. 



A MEDLEY. 55 



A MEDLEY. 



I listened to the sounds that burst, 

Half-muffled, on my ear ; 
The deep, bass tones growled low at first, 

Now distant, now more clear ; 
Then, then tumultuous, they railed 

In hoarse and hollow wrath. 
To break in clashing chords that hailed 

Their mock-artillery forth. 

In mimicry of shot and shell 

The heavy notes rebounded ; 
From wild pathos to dying knell, 

Half human, they resounded ; 
They seemed to battle in mid-air. 

They waned to stifled moanings, 
As if a desolate despair 

Had hushed their harsh intonings. 

Still higher up the scale they scored 

A hundred minuets, 
They drummed across the sounding-board, 

And rained their treble jets ; 
They rippled like the scurrying brook 

Along its pebbly bed. 



56 A MEDLEY. 

Then soared aloft, and thrilled and shook 
Like bird-songs overhead. 

How deftly now key answered key 

In skips and somersaults ; 
They stirred the air with melody, 

They came to sudden halts ; 
They stormed, they laughed, they cried again, 

They pled a piteous tale, 
They languished, as in utter pain. 

Along the minor scale. 

Then softer, sadder, sweeter still. 

Their music blent with themes 
That soothed my aching sense, to thrill 

My heart with haunting dreams ; 
A song, aye, like a far-off bell. 

An olden song I heard ; 
O'er stringless harps it wrought its spell. 

With neither sound or word. 



FLOOD TIDE. 57 



FLOOD TIDE. 



The flooding tide is drifting o'er the sand ; 

It sweeps far up beyond the ocean's edge, 
To bear its foamy crest along the strand 

In thundering laughters to the rocky ledge. 

What throbbings stir the sea from inward deeps, 
That all the world is girded with its song ? 

What life from some perennial fountain keeps 
Its billows rolling through the ages long ? 

When years were few and fair within my breast, 
I did not question thus, for then I felt 

The same wild flood of life, of glad unrest, 
From the full fountain that within me dwelt. 

But hark ! the sea is calm and peaceful now ; 

The noon has stilled its giant waves, — it lies 
Serene, reflecting back the bending brow 

Of heaven, the cloud and purple of its skies. 

Ah, Life ! thy noon hath touched my pulse, and lo 
Its vexing tumults for a moment cease ; 

The flooding tide has had its noisy flow. 

And, ebbing, soon will murmur its decrease. 



58 . AH, COULD WE KNOW ! 

O Sea ! O Life ! whose passioned youth is gone, 
Since thou must wane ere yet the day is dead, 

Bear to some other golden-freighted morn 
Thy swelling tide, its happy shore to wed : 

Yet let thy music through the memory sound. 
With soft receding echoes from the past. 

Until I hear thy circling tides rebound, 

Bringing with them immortal youth at last ! 



AH, COULD WE KNOW! 



We, waiting, watched beside her bed, 
And thought a nimbus crowned her head. 
As lying there, the calm face seemed 
An angel's from the earth redeemed. 

Full seventy years her patient love 
Had mixed with life, to nobly prove 
The Master's spirit in her own, 
That seemed to live so near his throne. 

We hoped, alas, her ill might stay 
Its mortal plague, and that the May 
Would touch her with its sunnier breath, 
To dissipate the Shadow, Death. 



AH, COULD WE KNOW. 59 

And o'er our mother's form we bent ; 
Our hearts in passioned bosoms pent ; 
The house itself was blank and dumb, 
Prophetic of the grief to come. 

Our sister held her feeble arm, 
To feel the pulse's faint alarm, 
And at a whisper, raised her head, 
" To ease and comfort her," she said. 

We watched the ominous change that fell 
Across her features — Death's mute knell — 
And gazed with weeping, tranced eyes, 
As if to see her spirit rise. 

Sweet face, deep furrowed, suffering face. 
So hallowed of Immanuel grace ! 
A grace that death had never given, 
Made beauteous in the peace of Heaven. 

We could not see behind the veil 
Of that still shadow, lifeless pale ; 
Our prayers, our tears in vain were spent, 
Our utmost souls were impotent. 

Ah, could we know the realm, afar. 
To what dear planet, what blest star, 
Her being took the homeward flight, 
What love would sanctify its light ! 



6o IN EMBRYO. 



IN EMBRYO. 



When Nature opes her doors to spring-time days, 
And gentle maidens murmur fresh-made songs ; 

When purple May-flowers spring in untrod ways, 
And every half-fledged youth, impassioned, longs 

For Love's warm heart to burst its petals sweet, 
To hold its rose-lips up for kisses fair, 

With little thought to bear itself discreet, 
But, generous to bestow a lavish share ; 

O, when the rills from winter's bondage free, 
Fill all the valley-wood with victory's cheer, 

And answer trill for trill with earliest glee 
Of some gay songster from the olden year, — 

Then thrill my pulses with a wanton joy. 

As if a thousand new-created veins 
In me had filled with nectar-wine, to buoy 

The lagging blood ; then thought, up-welling, 
strains 

To leap the verge of sense ; round each light hope 
A golden circle rims ; each joy, foretold, 

In memory finds its mate, as shadows grope 
Beside the sun-lit form. O, who can hold 



CONTRASTS. 6l 

The spirit then, or fetter any thing, 

Of mind or heart, that craves an utterance ? 

The tripping fancy, drunk with dewy spring, 
Brings vagrant children to a mart, for once, 

Where every wild imagining is clad 
In poet's garb, and set to lyric bars. 

Whose trembling harmonies, e'en, make us glad, 
As silvery echoes from the choral stars. 



CONTRASTS. 



TWILIGHT. 
I. 
Thy passive hour is often full of deeps ; 

The sun has left its after-glow far east ; 

O Twilight ! thou art stolen beauty ! least 
And last of day, — an amber-calm, that keeps 
The soul inlit with Heaven, and strangely steeps 

With low imbosomed song (true minstrel feast) 

The fairy imagery of thought ; released 
From sterner ways, the dreamy fancy sleeps 
In revery ; the world is hushed, and spirit 

Answers spirit in language of its own, 
Without the whisper, or the ear to hear it, 

As one, alone, who is not all alone ; — 
And stilly voices echo on the air, 
And silent songs melt into silent prayer. 



62 THE WAITING CHORDS. 



I hear the swift winds sweep along the west, 
Invisible — Heaven's armies put to flight ! — 
First far, then near, their giant wings affright 

The wailing forest-trees, that vainly breast 

Their torrent-force. And yet the sound is rest ; 
I love it — fierce, defiant — in its might. 
It lulls, like roar of ocean waves at night ; 

Companion-like, I love its tumults best ; 

For I am weak, and strong, and nothing long. 
Fretting against the narrow walls of sense, 

Impatient of the unimpassioned throng, 
Half-prisoned by dull fate, but still intense, 

With will to conquer and compel — a power 

That tempts, and yet eludes me every hour ! 



THE WAITING CHORDS. 



Heedless she strayed from note to note — 
A maid — scarce knowing that she sang ; 

The dainty accents from her throat 
In undulations lightly rang. 

She sang in laughing rhythms sweet ; 

A bird of spring was in her voice ; 
Till, on through measures deft and fleet, 

She caught the ditty of her choice. 



THE WAITING CHORDS. 63 

A song of love, in words of fire, 

Now made her breast with passion stir ; 

It breathed across her living lyre, 

And thrilled the waiting chords in her. 

Uplifted like a quivering dart. 

One moment poised the tones on high, 

To tell the language of her heart, 
And swell the pean ere it die. 

She smote the keys with will and force , 
Like storm-winds swept the sounds along ; 

Her flying fingers in their course, 
Vied with the tumult of her song. 

Her eyes flashed with the burning theme ; 

A glow of triumph flushed her cheek ; 
No need of words to tell the dream 

Of love her lips would never speak. 

When the wild cadence died in air. 
And all the chords to silence fell, 

I knew the spirit lurking there — 

The secret that had wrought the spell. 



64 FORESHADOWINGS. 



FORESHADOWINGS. 



Beneath the twiUght's brooding shade 

She lingered ; 'twas a maid, 

Fair-haired and beautiful of mien and eye, 

Who lonely, by the limpid pool. 

Breathed the sweet burden of a sigh, 

And felt the kiss of breezes cool. 

Simple she was and womanly ; 

And if sad thoughts can be 

Where innocence and pure love make their home, 

I deemed that in her eye were some 

Dark rays of sorrow vaguely traced, 

Which hope or joy had not effaced. 

As when the wayward brooklet thrills 

With eddies, then, ere long. 

By quiet nook, sighs in deep wells, and stills 

Its fitful course of laughing song. 

To question, there — or seemingly — 

Its virgin passion for the sea, 

So did her face betoken, now 

The fervor of her vow, 

And now a voiceless meaning, half of dread, 

A dim foreboding thought to wed 

A shadow with her love, what time 

The marriage bells should haply chime ; 



VOICELESS. 65 

And, ah ! the timid glances soft, 

That peered so, downfalling, 

And flush of cheek that, tell-tale, fain would oft, 

Like red'ning blossoms in the spring, 

Commingle with the deeper gleams. 

And light the sombre of her dreams ; — 

All these, like soft enchantments, passed 

In mute impassioned glows. 

Illumining eye and face with thoughts, that cast 

A sweet uncertainty. "Who knows," 

I said, " the secret of her heart ? " 

O love, thou hast a matchless art ! 



VOICELESS. 



We met beside the silvery stream. 

The still moon bathed her form in light ; 

She seemed a fairy-imaged dream. 
Half mantled in the breath of night. 

I felt her slight hand clasped in mine, 
O touch, so tremulous with bliss ! 

Our swift lips pressed to seal the sign, 
And pledge the troth with kiss for kiss. 

The night breeze cooled her temples fair, 
Whose fevered pulses bounded high ; 



66 VOICELESS. 

The star-mist lit her flowing hair 
And melted in her azure eye. 

We strayed far in the covert dell, 
We stole by stealthy ways, that led 

To where the shadows deeper fell. 
And winged words were fonder said. 

There as we murmured, soft and low, 
The old, old love, forever new, 

The fringed ferns seemed all aglow, 
And crimson blushes drank the dew ; 

All sounds, all sights were blent in one 
Sweet voice, one all-entrancing face ; 

My wistful heart, that night, had won 
A being touched with angel-grace. 

Long years have vanished ; as of yore, 
I wander to the same retreat ; 

I tread the streamlet's mimic shore. 

Where once were pressed her eager feet ; 

The still moon lights the lonely glade, 
The night-bird hoots its dismal strain ; 

The gloom within yon forest shade, 
Will never light with love again ! 

No voice relieves the solitude ; 

No song, save in the memory, dear. 



SONGS WITHOUT WORDS. 67 

Inspires in me the matchless mood 
That once had thrilled my spirit here ! 

Alas ! I dream of one whose heart 
Bequeathed to me its deathless love, 

Whose nameless graces now impart 
Their heaven-lit radiance from above ! 



SONGS WITHOUT WORDS. 



Ah ! hush thy tremulous voice of song, 
And still the noisy bank of keys ; 

Too deep, too deep, the joys that throng, — 
Or griefs, — to cherish such as these. 

Why mock with nicely studied rote. 
The stringless harp of other days ? 

Thou canst not touch its lightest note, 
Nor strike the chord that Memory plays. 

No soft, entrancing art of thine 
Can fill the silence of her voice ; 

No lips of thine can answer mine. 
Or bid an aching heart rejoice. 

Yet, sometimes thou dost snatch a word, 
A tone, an accent from the past, 



68 THE HEART OF NATURE. 

An Utterance that once was heard — 
A moment's thought, — O could it last ! 

But suddenly, it faints and dies, 
And all again is new and strange ; 

No other lips can breathe her sighs, 

Alas ! they're lost in Time and Change ! 



THE HEART OF NATURE. 



Ah ! it is rest to breathe 
The airy spirit of the wood. 
To hear the music of its solitude, 

Brooklet and bird, to pluck and wreathe 
The virgin flowers, fair sisterhood. 

That summer suns bequeathe. 

Soulless ? In nature's deeps 
Are the embosomed secrets of the mind ; 
In her lone grandeur and her gloom, behind 

The ever-restless currents, sleeps, 
To wake at touch of kindred heart, a kind 

Beneficence, that keeps — 

Beyond the world's annoy — 
A refuge where man craves her loves, 
And seeks a wilder freedom, as he roves 

In sweet delight, like any boy ; 



THE HEART OF NATURE. 69 

Or where, as in perplexity, he moves, 
She quickens him with joy. 

She (mother of us all) 
Spreads her wide wings, and kindly broods 
Over his waywardness of differing moods, 

Soothes his vain longings, hears the call 
Of his mute voice for harmony, and floods 

Him with her answering thrall. 

Not harshly does she chide 
When he, bereft of some dear hope, 
Pleads her to comfort him ; nor bids him grope 

In loneliness when troubles bide, 
Or spirit faints, but strews on every slope. 

Her children beautified. 

For every grief a flower 
Is blown ; for every prayer there rests 
A shadow o'er him ; wittingly she tests 

The soul, and blesses with a power, 
Lavish of wealth, that his poor life invests 

With unimagined dower. 

Say not, O doubting mind. 
That she is dumb, and cold, and dead ; 
That from her ancient deities is fled 

Their sceptred sovereignty ; nor find, 
In Science, thy divinity instead, 

To her veiled beauty blind. 



70 - SANFORD R. GIFFORD, 

Love rules in her great heart ; 
No other potency can woo 
And hold to fealty, as she can do, 

Or sweetly sway, by any art, 
Such inly sympathy of love, so true, 

As she fain would impart. 



SANFORD R. GIFFORD. 



Stilled is his pulse ; his deft right hand 
Is nerveless, that so oft had played 

With the soft tints of Orient-land, 

With the weird dream of sun and shade. 

Love-like, he worked in wizard ways : 

From dying halos in the west 
He wove an amber with the rays 

That crowned the ocean's surging crest. 

Not his the veil of night and death, 
Nor his the tempest's awful strife ; 

He caught the smile in nature's breath. 
And touched it with illumined life. 

His was the master's touch, and his 
The secret, subtle sense to find 



SANFORD R. GIFFORD. 71 

Earth's mutable realities 

Transfigured in the raptured mind. 

The alchemy of ether-fire, 

The seven prismatic hues, to him 

Were strains from some Eolian lyre, 
Or voicings of some mystic hymn. 

Like the true poet, in his thought 
An idyl dawned, and, fancy free, 

The visioned revery, inly wrought, 
Shone outward over land and sea ; 

For, ere the colors knew his art. 

Or had expressed his lightest theme. 

He saw them blended in his heart. 
And knew the picture in the dream. 

But now, alas ! when Nature crowns 
The Autumn with its dying flame, 

The mourning world, unfeigning, owns 
The starred lustre of his name. 



72 



THE BLEST. 



THE BLEST. 



Rare moments in the realm of mind, 
God gives to man, in which to live 

And gain a victory — undefined — 
Beyond the triumphs earth can give. 

Not action only wins the palm, 
Nor that wild energy that drives 

The jaded brain to banish calm, 

And think that nothing noble thrives ; 

That coins life's genius into wealth. 
And holds, perchance, that all is lost. 

If, by some guilty doubt or stealth, 
It pauses, questioning the cost ; 

That delves for gold, that masters space, 
Lays tribute on the sea and land, 

So one proud race with kindred race 
May barter treasures hand to hand. 

Alas, this lucre of the mind ! 

Could man but shun it and be wise, 
Or break its fetters, he might find 

Fortunes he does not realize ; 



NOT LESS, BUT MORE. 73 

Blest fortunes at the heart of time, 

God-given to thought ; like sea-girt isles 

That dwell apart, whose heavenly clime 
The unblest air of earth defiles. 

Ah, murmur not, thou doubting soul ; 

Nay, listen to the sibyl-voice 
That says, " Thou canst not have the whole, 

Life only gives to thee a choice." 



" NOT LESS, BUT MORE. 



When youth was borne on tireless wings. 
And hope to hope would beck and call, 
When liquid accents held me thrall. 

And music woke from golden strings, 

Then eagerly my glad heart beat, 
From sheerest turbulence of joy ; 
The world was visioned to the boy 

In prophecies of fancy sweet. 

No boding cloud would o'er me rise. 
No dumb despair within me pall ; 
I heard the happier voices call, 

And answered back in wild replies ; 



74 NOT LESS, BUT MORE. 

Or answered back with laughter low, 
That echoed, through the April sky, 
Like mocking minstrelsy, to die 

In laughter's clamorous overflow. 

Unheeding, then, my utmost thought, 
So frail, that, like the bloom of May, 
It changed with every changing day ; 

But now, through furnace-fire 'tis wrought ! 

And now, the glowing sun is veiled ; 

The brooding heart has felt its pain ; 

The music yields a fitful strain. 
And hope's fair prophecies have paled. 

Yet, yet, O world ! I deem thy store 

Not less, but more ; not false, but true ; 
I keep thy promised land in view, 

And dream of visions more and more ! 



ONE, A MAIDEN. 75 



ONE, A MAIDEN. 



Here, beneath the grasses, lies 
One, a maiden, true and sweet ; 

Fateful, from the summer skies. 
Fell the Shadow at her feet. 

Light fled from her gentle eye. 
Dust was written on her brow ; 

From her lips the lingering sigh 
Pressed to breathe her final vow. 

Ere the flower had filled the bloom — 
Part within the bud as yet, — 

Death had sent its heavy doom, 
And her earthly sun was set. 

Kindly was her simple heart, 
Plain the beauty of her face. 

Yet no nice degree of art 

Could have given a fairer grace. 

All her golden duties were 

Linked to others' needs and cares ; 
And their love she won to her 

By the love she lived for theirs ; 



76 ONE, A MAIDEN. 

By the virtue of a mind 

Taught, of many a rare device, 

That the heavenly way to find 
Is to lose in sacrifice. 

Flowers were strewn above her head. 
And the bending grasses grew 

Greener o'er her silent bed. 
Weeping nightly tears of dew. 

Yet methinks that when the spring 
Warms, again, this lonely mound, 

Flowers of rarer blossoming 

0*er her breast shall then be found 

Violets for her heart of truth, 

Lilies for a life so pure. 
Roses for eternal youth 

And a love that shall endure. 



THE SWEET MAY-TIME. 77 



THE SWEET MAY-TIME. 



May ! whose wild birds sing to me 
Their maiden songs ; whose timid flowers 
Make answer to the April showers ; 

Whose streams leap toward the summer sea ; 

Whose azure skies and dreamful woods 
Are yet unveiled by summer mist ; 
Whose maidenhood is yet unkissed 

By summer's sultry solitudes : 

1 love thy youth : — 'tis the first fire 
That warms the petals of the soul ; 
That promises a blossomed whole 

To the sweet wish of young Desire. 

Not heaped with treasure comest thou, 
Nor with a golden honeymoon 
That brings its full delight so soon, 

But only with a lover's vow, — 

Only the promise and the spring, 

Only the harbinger that holds 

In many closely fitting folds 
The germ of some great oifering. 



78 THE FIRST SORROW. 

O May ! thou hast the love of youth 
Imbosomed in thy spirit, given 
Like some diviner faith of heaven 

Betrothed to its eternal truth. 



THE FIRST SORROW. 



Two loved, — the perfumed spring was new^ 

The buds were dreaming into flowers, 

The virgin rain, in trembling showers. 

Had jewelled the fair land with dew ; 

And joyance spread, 

As moments fled. 

Two hearts went Maying — mate with mate^ 
The air was bathed in amber light, 
While balmy breezes of the night 
Stole secrets pledged in wooings late. 
When lover kneeled — 
When troth was sealed. 

Two sang — and minstrel voices blent 
In echo through the scented wood ; 
The birds — in sylvan loverhood — 
Mimicked the songs their rivals sent, 
O hearts, so true. 
To nuptials new ! 



THE FIRST SORROW. 79 

The shadows deepened as they passed, 
From darkling branches overhead, 
Until a cypress foliage spread 
A gloom that hushed their songs at last, 
And words were brief 
With stifling grief. 

Awhile in lonely vales they dwelt. 
Embosomed in a sudden sorrow ; 
Nor dreamt of gladness on the morrow, 
For brooding on the anguish felt. 
For hearts that rend. 
Are slow to mend. 

E'er yet the aching grief had ended, 

Low voices — pent with stricken thought — 
With songs of plaintive meaning fraught — 
In soft, subduing tones ascended. 
O reverence deep. 
In holy-keep ! 

They sang, but ever and anon 

They listened for an answering voice, 
And often would restrain the choice 
That beckoned back their angel one. 
O memory dear ! 
Forever near ! 

Two loved, — but sorrow looks on high, 
And adds the incense to the shrine : 



8o ' INFINITO. 

A bond less earthly than divine, 
Had taught them love could never die, 
Till meaner joy 
Seemed heaven's alloy. 



INFINITO. 



Could I but grasp the vision, make it mine, 

In one full masterly embrace possess 
The splendor of my dream, its joy enshrine, 

And hold it as some trophy-crown, to bless 
With perfect calm and peace the conquest won ; 

Or could I clear the mist, and fairly face 
The high beatitudes of radiant morn. 

That reach through infinite degrees of space ; 
What then — ah, what ? The heart would sigh for 
more ; 

The longings of a great unrest would send 
Swift-winged messengers far on before ; 

Such glory undefined could only lend 
A depth to height, a sadness to desire, — 

A voice forever calling, " Come up higher." 



TO F. A, H. 8l 



TO F. A. H." 



Dear friend, these faltering rhymes of mine and 

thine, 
And these frail songs that scarce can bear the 

weight 
Of meaning, that betray only the strait 
And narrow sense of some vast theme divine ; 
What matter that we write a word or line ? 
They 're but the shadows, the faint symbols ; late 
And early, like the beggar at the gate. 
We long to pass beyond the given sign. 
To enter at some regal way, to scale 
Parnassian heights of unimagined lore ; 
But our weak, limping language can but fail, 
And we are left, where oft we were before. 
Dreaming a prophecy above the din, 
A promise — " Sometime ye may enter in ! " 



82 BETROTHED. 



BETROTHED. 



Oft have I seen her when her artless art 

Would seem to tell her secret to the eye ; 

Or, when her breast, o'erburdened with its sigh, 

Would press to breathe the language of the heart ; 

And yet it was her highest joy to part 

From friend, or e'en her dearest kin, and hie 

To solitudes of Eden-thought, and lie 

In wait for finer notes of love ; then start, 

Like frightened fawn at fancied sound of voice. 

To seek a covert, where, again alone, 

Secure, she 'd dream of him, her plighted choice, 

Plead to herself the bliss she dare not own ; 

At last to end her revery in tears. 

Ideals of the long-expectant years ! 



WEDDED. 83 



WEDDED. 



Once was her heart a rivulet of song — 
A lyric fount of pure, melodious verse — 
Through which her fleet emotions would disperse 
In fitful, murmuring eddies, all day long ; 
But now, behold a river clear and strong, 
Whose restful waters hold sweet-willed converse 
With deeper meditations, or traverse 
In rhythms which to double lives belong ; 
And now I know whatever winds may blow 
Or storms may break upon the waters deep 
Of that true heart, that from the central flow 
Of its great love, their course will surely keep 
Along the emerald marge of some fair shore. 
Where flowerets bud and blossom evermore ! 



§4 PRESAGING. 



PRESAGING. 



It hung on the wall ; a dying blaze 

Lit it up, from the dying sun ; 
I gazed on the face as one might gaze 

On the face of an unknown one. 
The twilight-dusk, with its gathering gloom. 

Stole stealthily over the wall ; 
I sat alone in the silent room, 

Overspread by the deepening pall. 

Then the moonlight filled the shadowy place, 

With the magic of its gleam ; 
It cast its rays on the motionless face ; 

I started as from a dream. 
For the eyes were charged with a living light, — 

Soft eyes that pleaded with me. 
Till I felt their deep mysterious sight 

Presaging the years to be. 

Though the face, the eyes, of that night are gone, 

Have faded like phantoms in air. 
The years that came revealed to me one 

Who answered the image there. 



THE MAID OF ANOTHER MAY. 85 



THE MAID OF ANOTHER MAY. 



Through green vales she wanders, by virginal 
streams ; 

She muses, and wanders, and drinks the soft balm 
That Nature distils in the Spring of its dreams, 

And she borrows the peace of its infinite calm. 

She sings, as she wanders, a low plaintive song ; 

Not new, like the snatch of a sauntering maid, 
But a song that her bosom has carried so long, 

A grief that her bosom has wearily paid : 

" Birds, I heard thee, in the yew-tree, 
Ere the summer breezes stirred ; 
Then I knew thee ; now I rue thee ; 
Once I carolled like a bird. 

'* Heedless I, no vows to bind me. 
Love was a wild world of bliss ; 
Come, I said, O Love, and find me. 
Come and win me with a kiss ! 

" So Love came, one radiant morning ; 
O, that day ! Alack for this ! 
What cared I to take a warning, 
When Love wooed me with a kiss ? 



86 A FRAGMENT. 

** Wooed me in the purple May-time, 
Till my heart no more was free, 
Wooed me with a careless May-rhyme, 
To a Love that loved not me. 

" Love, thou art a phantom only ; 
Voiceless dreamer of my heart ; 
I am lonely ! I am lonely ! 

O, that Love and I could part ! " 

Thus ever she sings, and her memory still 

Survives in the song that her sad bosom makes. 

Ah, the music of love that forever must thrill 
Through her heart, where only its echo awakes ! 



A FRAGMENT. 



I dared not say farewell, but stood 
A statue, chill, and marble pale ; 
Though my heart would mourn and wail, 

Never uttered I a word 

When we parted. 

I hear a murmur, on the sand. 

Of whispering waves that lave the shore 
With a message, — " Never more," — 

To me, — from an empty land — 
Broken-hearted ! 



A SONG. 87 



A SONG. 



Say not so, say not so, 

Lest my heart abreaking, 
Charge thee with its bitter woe, 
Curse thee for thy saying so. 

Hear my vow, hear my vow, 

Let thy heart, awaking. 
Murmur its sweet answer, low, 
As our loves together flow ; 
Say not no ! 



A SONG. 



I had quaffed from the fountain's full bowl 

When the sun hung high in its place, — 
When the heat of the spring-tide mist stole 

Through fevered throbs into my face. 
I had quaffed with lips that were blushing, 

The waters that laughed in their glee, — 
The waters that leaped as if gushing 

From the depths of a passionate sea. 



5 A SONG, 

When the frost-winds had frozen the earth 

I paused at the bare fountain's side ; 
I heard not the laughter, the mirth ; 

The music of waters had died : 
For the breath of a chill November 

Had bound with an icy-locked rim 
The fountain I fain would remember. 

That played when I drank at the brim, 

I had loved, in the bloom of the May, 

A maiden whose love answered mine ; 
She would sing the swift moments away 

To Love's own rapt cadence divine ; 
We drank at the wild overflowing 

That brimmed to the lips, — from the bowl 
Of Love,^ — which our spirits, not knowing. 

Had drawn from the passionate soul. 

I have sought for the maiden of spring, 

For the lips that mated with mine ; 
I have longed for the love she would bring, 

And dreamt of the being divine ; 
But the passion she pledged, no longer 

Wells up from the deeps of her heart. 
For the icy-locked seal is stronger 

Than love, that would melt it apart. 



A PARTING SONG. 89 



A PARTING SONG. 



Not long ago, I listened to the song 

A robin trilled, as, from a covert shade. 

Beneath a maple's golden bough, its strong. 

Clear voice broke from the stillness of the glade. 

To me, the plaintive notes had drawn their sweets 
From Nature's emblems of the waning year. 

A flush of glory and of death entreats 

The heart to nameless longings, which endear 

The senses to the mem'ry, as they meet 

This vision of the summer's parting bloom ; 

And as the redbreast's wondrous song did greet 
My ear, it seemed a plea to stay the doom. 

*'The past ! the past ! O for a breath of spring ! 

Come back to me, ye loves of youth ! " it said ; 
" O ! hasten, moments, once again, and bring, 

Bring to my brooding wings the loved ones fled." 

A dying pathos blended with its tone, 

As if it knew that never more again 
Could be reclaimed the happy seasons gone. 

Its wild impassioned song was sung in vain ! 



go CARLYLE. 

Its tired wings, uplifted, beat the air, 

As, breasting onward toward the southern sky, 

Noiseless it soared away, I know not where, 
In softer climes to sing its song, — and die. 



CARLYLE. 



Death, waiting at the gate of day — 
Dumb master of the laws of Time, 
The Fate of worlds, of lives sublime — 

Has led him through its silent way. 

His spirit glowed with fire intense. 
Of genius lent, and out of pain. 
By dint of truth, he plucked the gain, — 

The faith of richer recompense. 

Though all the world disown their signs, 
To him transcendent things were true ; 
The thoughts that others dreamed he drew 

In grand, illuminated lines. 

He breathed the poet's lofty clime — 
His virgin loyalty to law- 
Yet wrote the visions that he saw 

Without the poet's verse or rhyme. 



CARLYLE. 91 

Nor deigned to work by rote or rule, 
But held the dainty crafts of men 
As something less than human ken, 

That slaved the master to the school. 

His life to him was more than art : 
He loved to battle — to be strong ; 
For conscience' sake to press the wrong : 

'T was kindred to his royal heart. 

And, ah ! he loved the wild laments 

That swept, like winds o'er cliffs, athwart 
The steeps of his own mountain thought, 

As native with the elements. 

Carlyle, we speak thy name in vain ; 
Its echo answers in the air. 
As voices sound from rock to lair, 

And vainly echo back again. 

Yet now that Time and Sense have wrought 
Their force within thy mortal frame, 
The glory of thy living name 

Shall blazon in thy deeds of thought ! 



92 DIVIDED. 



DIVIDED. 



The wide sea severs friend from friend ; 

The sea of life, of thought, of hope ; 
It drives their sail to veer and wend. 

Through differing courses, down its slope. 

One barque is lured to some fair bay 
Where, dreamily, the seasons glide. 

To dally with the lighter spray. 

And bathe in whirls of eddying tide. 

One blithely dips in sunny deeps, 
As laughing breezes cross its trail. 

And fortune-favored, sheers and leaps, 
Unchallenged by the tardy gale. 

Yet, by the darkling tempest swept, 

O'er mountain wave, through wintry sleet, 

By sterner fate, a third is kept, 
Forever battling with defeat ; 

While, on the sea, in surge and calm, 

Another rides, a victor, free, 
Who plucks a glory from the storm, 

A triumph for her destiny. 



THE POET S SONG. 93 

Still, far beyond, dismantled, lies 

The wreck of some belated craft. 
Whose master tells, with languid sighs, 

Of seas that swept her fore and aft. 

And thus, divided, friend from friend, 

On one vast sea, ah, who can say 
The wistful thoughts that heart would send 

To heart across the voiceless way ! 



THE POET'S SONG. 



A poet sang a song, once, from the heart ; 

The lines that bore its meaning scarce could bear 
The cadence of its spirit, or impart 

Its music, so full-laden with the rare, 
Deep melodies of life was every rhyme. 

Sometimes it murmured, in its verse, of days 
Steeped in the golden dreams of hope sublime, 

That led him back to rose-embosomed ways. 

Where the wild verdure blossomed at his feet, 
And fed his heart with fragrant breath of dawn ; 

Where life, dilating, stirred with romance sweet. 
That tuned his theme to some fair-visioned morn, 

Peopling his dream with fantasies of youth 
Ere yet the sullen shadow's pitiless doom 



94 THE POET S SONG. 

Had ever crossed with pale, prophetic truth 
His radiant path, to sere its native bloom. 

Sometimes its sinuous thought would lend a tone 

That lingered like low vespers ; when his soul, 
Embalmed in revery, and left alone. 

Communed with the still stars, or gathered toll 
From brooding vale or sleeping solitude ; 

Or else, belike, his inly sense would call 
Him back to those impassioned years that wooed 

Love's eager lips to his, in blissful thrall. 

Then came, alas, a thought to change the spell ; 

His voice would tremble in its under-breath. 
As he in fancy heard the muffled bell, — 

The virgin knell that bore th' alarm of death ; 
His deepening spirit felt a burden now ! 

Lo, in his saddened song such notes would creep, 
Of such emotioned ecstasy of woe, 

That memory only woke to love and weep. 

Then, ruefully, he said : " No more I '11 sing 

Of that which was, but cannot be again. 
Nay, mine shall be a carol on the wing, 

I '11 sing of rapture and forget the pain 
That memory cherishes ; ah, life shall be 

Intoned to sweet enchantments for the ear ; 
The present, in its plumed pageantry, 

Shall thrill my melody with noisy cheer. 



THE POET S SONG. 95 

" In place of music set to notes of calm, 

Which love, in exile, wakens with a sigh, 
I '11 touch with sudden transport every charm 

That paints its blazoned beauty for the eye ; 
Nature shall lose its lonely depths of power 

To draw away from sense my wandering thought. 
The Amaranth-wreath, the pressed leaves of the 
flower. 

All heart-reminders, sentiments inwrought 



'' Of grief for the departed, hopes unblest, — 

These, with the mystery of the silent tomb, 
Its unsolved problem and its boding rest, 

Where drooping willows mourn, and hedges 
gloom. 
In me no voice shall find, vain shadows they ! 

But heedless of the questionings of the mind, 
The gala throng shall hear my heedless lay. 

The wooing world shall wed me to its kind." 

*' And I will sing of fortunes won, of life 

Crowned with a gilded fame, of burning brain 
Throbbing amid the thundering wheels of strife, 

Of pleasure careless of the pangs of pain ; 
The future is but fate, the past is gone ; 

Prayer I will never make, nor silent plea ; 
Alas, the ills that homeless hearts have borne, 

Why lift the veil— enshrouded let them be. 



g6 AGE. 

" Splendors of day, and garish scenes of night, 

Music that drowns the thirsty spirit's cry, 
The empty incantations of delight, 

The glittering joys that flourish, fade, and die, — 
Fair fugitives of time, whose luring arts. 

Beguiling men, may win the world from toil, — 
These revels will I sing, nor torture hearts 

With orphaned memory's fruitless dole and spoil." 

So said the poet ; then he touched the strings, 
But they were all unstrung, the music mute ; 

No haunting spirit moved his minstrelings. 

The magic tones were hushed on lip and lute ! 



AGE. 



The ivy weaves its mantle green. 
Over the ancient castle-height ; 

It hides each crevice with a screen, 

And shields the ruined walls from sight. 

No sounds of earth's dull troubles jar 
The dreamy sense that o'er it broods, 

Weird echoes, breaking from afar, 
Sleep in its haunted solitudes. 



AGE. 97 

The swallow stills its noisy tongue, 
Or tempers its harsh chatterings ; 

The linnet sings its daintiest song, 
As round the parapet it wings. 

The night-owl keeps its vigil hour 

Above the ragged battlements, 
And from the vault of its stone tower 

Sends forth its lonely, long laments. 

Here Time has sown the peace of age 

To mingle with the hoary rust ; 
Tradition tells of lord and page, 

And consecrates the lore of dust. 

O Time, thou healer of all ill, 

Bring to each crumbling life a balm ; 

In every aged breast, fulfil 

The blessing of thine ancient calm. 

Let memory charm the world away ; 

Bring music sweet, to failing ears ; 
Bring joy to thwart the sad decay. 

And ransom for the dying years. 

About each silvered crest of age 

Weave there a crown of honor meet ; 

Let peace the pangs of earth assuage. 
And write a victory o'er defeat. 



98 THE DYING DAY. 



THE DYING DAY. 



TO E. S. B. 



Its path is in the glowing west, 

Embossed with gold and fringed with light ; 
It holds a prophecy of rest 

Within its gathering folds of night. 

It came on silent, airy wings, 

Emblazoned by a heart of fire, 
And led to fresh enchanting springs. 

Through many a maze of sweet desire. 

From morn till noon its pinions dipped 
To fen and field, and upland lead, 

Where Love 'mid luring blossoms sipped, 
And fancy wooed thee with its gleed. 

But ere the mid-sun swept the crest, 
Swift moving up the bending heaven. 

Grim clouds sailed forth from out the west, 
And sadness to thy soul was given. 

Its vapors dimmed the dazzling morn ; 
The glittering coronals of earth 



THE DYING DAY. 99 

Wore sombre hues, and, inly born, 
The shadows fell upon thy mirth. 

And Love, and Joy, and Purpose slept. 
And woke again to better ends ; 

Thy jaded spirit wed and kept 

The hallowed wisdom sorrow sends. 

Now saddened voices sing to thee 
From life, outpouring deeper strains, 

And lo ! a richer melody 

Consoles thy heart for all its pains. 

The pageantry of life is spent, 
Its gilded banners all are furled ; 

All stilled the harsher discontent. 
And clanging noises of the world. 

And stilled at last, thy vexing snares. 
The dreary dreams of goals unwon ; 

And hushed are all thy torturing cares, 
So let their haunting masks begone. 

The day is dying ; yet again. 

From the last lustre of its crown. 

Take thou its lesson, not in vain 

Its cross has weighed thy spirit down. 



lOO FORGET-ME-NOTS. 



And as its lingering lights decline, 
As sink its deepening fires below, 

Thy thoughts shall wear the heavenly sign, 
The symbol of its afterglow ! 



" FORGET-ME-NOTS." 



When youth was free and joys were young, 

I went a-Maying many a day. 
And oh, what heedless songs were sung 

Far in that dreamy, purple May ! 

When life was fresh, what careless hands 
Stretched forth to pluck the violets sweet, 

To weave in wreaths of queenly bands, 
As pressed the bloom my buoyant feet. 

I only knew that flowers were fair, 
I only knew that skies were blue, 

For round my heart no lurking care 
Had woven shades of sadder hue. 

May ! O youth ! — no circling years 
Can lead me back to thee again ; 

1 think of thee through hidden tears, 

Or all my thoughts of thee are vain : 



AND GIVE GLAD HEARTS THEIR INNING. lOI 

For in each wreath that now I twine, 
Dear memory weaves a faded leaf, 

And unseen fingers bring to mine 
" Forget-me-nots " for every sheaf. 



"AND GIVE GLAD HEARTS THEIR 

INNING." 



What troops of flowers, in emerald deeps, 

By Summer suns attended ! 
The purple-eyed, that slyly peeps ; 

The queen magnolia splendid ; 
The dainty star, the fairy-bell. 

The sad creightonia paling. 
The crowfoot of the mossy dell. 

The maidenhair, low trailing. 

And from the trees the dogwood sheds 

Its dazzling snows ; the cherry 
Blooms forth in skyey, billowy beds. 

With apple-blossoms merry ; 
The royal oak. in purpled brown. 

The coral maple vying. 
Now stretch their leafy foils, half blown, 

To woo the breezes, sighing. 



102 AND GIVE GLAD HEARTS THEIR INNING, 

The woodbine sends its creepers out 

As if for picket duty ; 
The ivy winds its toils about ; 

The trumpet blooms to beauty ; 
The lilac floods the air with scents, 

The sweet wisteria mating ; 
Awhile the deeper tints intense, 

Within their cells are waiting. 

The season weaves its wilds among 

The greens, in glowing passions ; 
The carpet of the earth, ere long. 

Reveals its wondrous fashions. 
When all the floral shrines, upborne, 

Shall spread their tiny graces, 
With blessings for the melting morn 

That lights their dewy faces. 

Down in the glen the thrushes call, 

The bluebird thrills its lover. 
And round some cranny of the wall 

The busy sparrows hover ; 
The oriole skims the crystal streams 

That heedless laugh ; and, yonder, 
The redbreast wings its airy dreams, 

Or hides its nestlings under. 

Why marvel that the earth is fair, 

That joys, like June flowers, springing- 



CLOTHED UPON. 103 

Full-blossomed — deck the grave of care, 
And give glad hearts their inning ? 

Why marvel that the world is won 
By beauty such as this is ? 

I, too, my garland-crowns would don, 
And revel in its blisses ! 



CLOTHED UPON. 



Drearily the bleak winds blow 

O'er the withering slopes to-night ; 

Summers come, and summers go, 
Borne in autumn's chilly flight ; 
Well I know 

All things change ! Ah, all things change ! 

Fleet and mutable, they pass. 
Dear eyes, now, may turn to strange, 

Love to scorn, perchance. Alas ! 
All things change ! 

O the golden-gate of youth ! 

Soon we pass its portal-morn ; 
Truth has not the fire of Truth 

When the fire of Youth is gone ; 
Age and ruth, 



I04 CLOTHED UPON. 

Sorrowing in the autumn gale, 
Sighing in the autumn sun, 

Wed, and tell their piteous tale, 
Ere the race of Life is run : 
All things fail ! 



All things fail ? Nay, cease thy plaint ; 

When the roses droop and die, 
And their trembling petals faint. 

Odors float on every sigh. 
Without taint. 

Pleasures live not till they 're gone. 

Song — its silent harmony — 
Takes ethereal virtue on, 

Heard in thought and memory, 
Clothed upon. 

Clothed upon ! Ah, who can know 
How the Spirit clothes upon 

In this shadowy world below ? 
Only in the heavenly dawn 

Shall we know 1 



FROM THE COUNCIL GROUND. 105 



FROM THE "COUNCIL GROUND." 

Sleepy-Hollow. 
To S. W. D. 



I thank thee for the name, and for the spell 
Which thy weird fancy conjures, wherewithal 
To people this charmed spot ; for, as I call, 

In answer, from the depths of yonder dell, 

Sage chiefs, of forest fame, with warrior-yell 
Proclaim their sovereignty ; while softly fall. 
From lips of dusky maid, — that half enthrall, — 

Wild notes of legendary song, to tell 

The tale of Love, Immortal, to her Brave. 

Then, as again I wave the mystic wand, 

I hold true converse with the one who gave 

The name. We pass the pledge, and seal the bond 
To share the rhythmic graces of the heart, 
Which lurk beneath these minstrel forms of art. 



Io6 A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. 



A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. 



Sometimes a silence breathes upon the air, 
Full laden with a music mutely deep, 
That lulls the senses to oblivious sleep ; 
No silvery chords or murmuring lips may dare 
To vie in sweetness with this songster rare, 
Or share its harmonies, which, voiceless, steep 
The sacred revery of the heart, and keep 
The spirit kindred to the spell of prayer. 
The purest notes, trilled by impassioned voice. 
Are wasted then upon the listless ear ; 
The wakened memory is left no choice 
But to be wooed in flight to some old year. 
When mother-lips in holy prayer were heard. 
Or maiden love once spoke its sovereign word. 



CONSTANCY. 

CONSTANCY. 



107 



Her presence breathed of sun-lit slopes, 

Sweet-faced, toward the west. 
As when a sadness blends with hopes, 

For love that's laid to rest ; 
Not yet had years their darkening scroll 

Of grievous trouble left. 
Youth scarce had claimed its parting toll, 

Or beauty been bereft. 

And many questioned, each of each, 

" Why one so young and fair, 
Should shun the common ways that teach 

What common natures share ? " 
Though life revealed before her eyes 

Its fond Utopian schemes, 
Or love unveiled with softest sighs, 

Its fancy-woven dreams, — 

Her life had other signs for her, 

Her love had other gain ; 
Her heart was her interpreter, 

Which earth could not profane. 
Alas ! I knew that solitude, 

To her was doubly sweet, 
That other hearts could not intrude 

Since one had ceased to beat ! 



Io8 THEKLA. 



THEKLA.* 



She listened for the last that his lips should utter, 
Who came with the message of death to her ears ; 

No trembling sigh for the dole that it brought her 
Unloosened the seal to her fountain of tears. 

The pale on the cheek, that so often had spoken 
With blushes for joy that her bosom had borne. 

Now lurks, like the signet of death, to betoken 
The doom of the night for the hope of the morn. 

O where have they borne him, her warrior-slain 
lover, 
Whom the siren of battle had lured from her 
breast ? 
Though far away, yet will she roam the world over. 
To the grave where, in gloom, they have laid 
him to rest. 

She calls for her steed, ere the swoon of her sorrow 
Has slackened its hold on her languishing heart, 
And speeding her flight, ah ! " To-morrow, to- 
morrow," 
She cries, " I shall find thee, and weep where 
thou art." 



THEKLA. 109 

Far in a dim cloister, beside its dumb altar, 
There vainly she utters his name for relief ; 

The mute walls awaken with sad tones that falter, 
But the stones are unstained with tears for her 
grief. 

And lowly she bends to the shrine, as she murmurs 
The plight of her heart to the heart that has fled ; 

Yet never will dawn Love's fair, sunny Summers, 
O never will answer the lips of the dead ! 

She breathes the sweet vows once so ardently given^ 
She listens, alas, for a voice that is still ; 

No heart has the tomb for a heart that is riven, 
'Tis only the spirit her spirit can thrill ! 

Cold, like the mute marble, her form as they find her, 
No earth-wooing solace her anguish could still, 

Love claimed her its own, and no bond here could 
bind her. 
Ah ! only its spirit her spirit can thrill ! 



AH, NO MORE IS LOVE. 



" AH, NO MORE IS LOVE ! " 



Ah, no more is love, I said. 
For the heart I loved is dead ! 

The deft hand I oft have grasped, 
By another hand is clasped ; 
The false lips that I have kissed. 
Now by other lips are pressed ; 
And the bond that made us one, 
Is forever more undone ! 

Once her dexterous voice would sing 
To my ears the loves of Spring ; 
Once those furtive, piercing eyes 
Stirred my heart with sweet surprise ; 
Once her treacherous promise given, 
Oped a fancied glimpse of heaven ; 
Now, alas, I am forlorn, 
For the plight that is forsworn ! 

Never lived that heart for me ? 
Never ? Oh it cannot be ! 
Not for me the kisses meant. 
Nor the passion thrills they sent ? 
Or those 'trancing eyes that shone, 
Were they not for me, alone ? 



IN THE RAVINES OF THE CATSKILLS. HI 

Were those tender notes of song 
But the triumph of her wrong ? 
Were her luring words intoned 
With a depth they never owned ? 

O, that life should teach me this, 
That a sting lurks in a kiss ! 
That within the fairest flower, 
Love has ashes for its dower ! 
That the faded leaf I press 
Never had an emeraldness ! 
That the heart for which I grieve. 
Pledged me, only to deceive ! 

Ah, no more is love ; farewell 
To the one who wove the spell ! 



IN THE RAVINES OF THE CATSKILLS. 



Through moss-grown rifts, along the clifts, 
The wild surge leaps in silvery splendor ; 

And sheeny sprays melt in the rays 
Of Autumn sunlights, sadly tender. 

While high above, the tremulous murmurs fly, 

And lift their liquid music to the sky. 

Ear up the crag the waters flag. 
And pool in hollow caverns under, 



112 IN THE RAVINES OF THE CATSKILLS. 

Then break, and dash, in noisy crash, 

Adown the dizzy deeps like thunder, 
Till, faintly falling in the depths below, 
In dying laughter they forever flow. 

The daisies prink the plashy brink, 

And from the rocks and lichens hoary, 

The golden-rod, with mimic nod. 

Torch-like, blooms in its silent glory ; 

The trembling aster lifts its starry eye. 

To take its purple-violet from the sky. 

Dull odors float o'er fen and moat, 

On winds that sigh through piny tresses ; 

White vapors fall, and mantle all, 
To melt again in dream-like fleeces ; 

A radiance gilds the azure dome of light. 

With rarer beauty through the chasmed height. 

The eagle sweeps above the steeps. 

Unchallenged by the haunts of mortals ; 

The birdlings fling their carolling 

Through many hidden sylvan portals ; 

And airy love revives in downy breasts. 

To wing its songs beneath the frowning crests. 

Dusk twilight falls o'er towering walls, 
That Nature reared in scarred ledges. 

Whose sullen deeps and donjon-keeps 

Are wrought with wreaths of ferny hedges, 



GARFIELD. II3 

Where covert Solitude, serene, has slept, 

'Mid battling storms that, ages long, have swept. 

And over all the sear leaves fall. 

Mute emblems of a dying beauty, 
Yet over all the sweet thoughts call 

The heart to realms of holier duty. 
Till in the mountain glow of Autumn breath. 
The spirit dreams beyond the sigh of death. 

O Eden springs, whose freshness brings 

Elysian promises of heaven, 
Whose lone defiles and shadowy aisles. 

To waiting souls, are visions given, — 
As paths of upper air, whose ways, if trod. 
Divinely lead from nature up to God ! 



GARFIELD. 



Braver than Roman sentinel 
He died, enduring to the last ; 

No captain ever nobler fell. 

Nor Death a deeper shadow cast. 

Prayers, none could reach the mystery, 
Though millions daily lifted theirs, 

The morrow baffled yesterday. 

As if in scorn of tears and prayers. 



114 GARFIELD. 

He felt the deadly touch, and still, 
With master-strength, he braved the strife ; 

For, oh, he battled with the will 
Of Christian fortitude, for life ! 

His courage won from all the world, 
A hero's due, of homage great ; 

At half-mast now, the flags, unfurled. 
Are draped for him who lies in state. 

Large-brained, but larger yet of heart. 
His broadening sympathy divined 

The lore of Truth, and had the art 
To teach its lessons to mankind. 

He sought no prize or praise of men, 
No selfish dream, no blazoned fame, 

His grand ideal of human ken 

Was more than circumstance or name. 

He saw beyond earth's narrow shore, 

And spurned the shallow sands of Time ; 

For, in a higher faith, he bore 
The spirit-life of trust sublime. 

Alas, to honors lifted high ! 

Scarce one-half year of hope and fear — 
In which to do, and then to die — 

Has laid him on his lonely bier. 



HEART-POSSESSED. 1 1 5 

A nation mourns beside the tomb 
Of him who kept its high decree ; 

O Death, thou hast thy sting and gloom ! 
O Grave, thou hast thy victory ! 



HEART-POSSESSED. 



He breathed a song once to the ear — 
The ear, wherever it might be 
To hear the new-born minstrelsy, 

With heart to feel, ere it could hear 
The song he sang ; 

And sent it on its lonely way 

(The song) — a silent way — but heard 

No more through the round world one word 

Of his rapt dream, from that glad day, — 
So light it was. 

Then deeper in the shade he went, 
Where from the copses he entoned 
A melody that part bemoaned 

The fate that met the first he sent ; 
Yet none would hear. 

Still later, in the sun and shade. 

There half-between, with faultless art. 
He poised a song without a heart. 



Il6 OPTIMISM. 

To which faint praise the critics paid — 
" A dainty thing." 

And fear and hope were lightly blent, 
Till suddenly a darkness fell 
Across his way with ominous knell, 

When all his passioned soul, unpent. 
In grief went forth. 

Then, heart-possessed, he wrote, in pain, 
A song that from the depths outflew. 
On wings that dazed the cunning few. 

But the great world caught up the strain 
And sang the song ! 



OPTIMISM. 



I dream through years, for the joys to come ; 

Through twilight dusk, for the gold of morn ; 
My barque veers towards her destined home, 

As over the harbor-bar she 's borne. 

I deem the voyage a lightsome task. 

And laugh at winds, and mock the tide ; 

In mists of the sun and moon I bask. 
And watch the roll of the ocean wide. 



AT LENGTH. II7 

I watch the roll of the ocean wide, 
Nor think that on its level expanse 

Somewhere, sometime, my vessel may hide 
And wreck in its mountain waves, perchance. 

For I gaze beyond the stormy swell, 

Far, far to the verge of space and time ; 

I only know of the hopes that well, 
I can only see the end, sublime ! 



AT LENGTH. 



Weak, we murmur for strength ; 

Helpless, we crave for power ; 
Dreaming, alas, at length, 

Of their doubly-gifted dower ; 
Waiting for chance to throw 

Fortune and favor and fame 
All at our feet, and so 

Gain us a coveted name. 

Strength ? — we gaze at the hills, 
Awed at splendor of sight 

The might of tempest thrills 
A heap of wealth is might 

We strive, we dream, we fail 
Our wayward fancies play 



Il8 AT LENGTH. 

Through castles of air that pale 
In visions that fade away. 

But strength, ah, where is it found, 

Large and abundant to bless ? 
Will it not come at a bound ? 

What is it ? who can express ? 
Conjurers murmur their spell 

Of magic for idle fools ; 
Truth is found in a well ; 

Knowledge is taught in the schools. 

But strength from year to year, 

Through darkness of midnight, strength, 
When those we hold most dear 

In love, are lost at length ; 
When scorn, and hate, and pain. 

And woe distil their dole. 
And hopes that whispered gain. 

Are dead in the fainting soul ! 

Strength — as to skylark's wing — 

Comes from resistance long ; 
Comes from the songs we sing ; 

Comes from suffering wrong. 
The more we beat the tides, 

The more we breast the winds, 
Strength through our pulses glides. 

Strength all our spirit binds. 



IN MEMORY. 119 

We waver, we faint, we fall. 

We rise, and we fall again ; 
Life is a service, a thrall. 

Life is a cry and a pain ; 
Joy and its opposite, grief. 

Faith and its counter, despair, 
Rest and its burdened relief. 

Tension of action and prayer. 
Play through the passions of life. 

Weakness is mother of strength ; 
Out of thraldom and strife 

Strength shall issue at length ! 



IN MEMORY. 

F. A. T. 1883. 



Scarce had life a fruitage borne, 

Fruit of Heaven in life of his, 
When the blighting breath forlorn, 

Touched him with its withering kiss- 
Smote him unto death, and he 

Lies beneath the sward, alas ! 
Distant, by the western sea, 

Lost to earth and all that was. 

Who may know — ah ! who can tell 
All the spirits his has blest ? 



IN MEMORY. 

Who the mantle wear that fell 
From him, dying in the west ? 

Rests he there in silence now ; 

Urned in earth, and formless grown, 
Where the Summer breezes blow. 

Where the Summer flowers are blown. 

All unconscious he of those 

Who their crowns and crosses bring ; 
He has found, at last, repose. 

Mindless of the songs they sing. 

O'er the spot where he was lain 
Nestlings prattle in the boughs ; 

Though the heart be locked in pain. 
Nature there its peace bestows. 

Silent flows the river there. 
Southward winding evermore. 

And the melodies of air 

Wing above the changeless shore. 

On his turf the sunlight falls 
With the passing of the day ; 

On his turf the shadow falls 
As the day-star fades away. 

On his turf the' still moon shines 
Silvery from its swelling crest ; 



SEPTEMBER. 

Haply there the myrtle twines, 
More luxuriant for his rest. 

Year on year will come and go, 
Doling out the laden hours ; 

Summer's harvest, Winter's snow, 
Land of frosts and land of flowers ; 

Yet, O brother lost to me ! 

Aye, I hear the low refrain 
Of the river to the sea : 

"He will not come back again." 



SEPTEMBER. 



A shadow rests upon the fields 

As earlier suns are setting ; 
The corn has reached the tasselled age, 

Its silken tresses netting ; 
And now the Autumn season waits. 

In mellowing forms of fruitage. 
To shed its ripened sheaves and spheres, 

And lapse to Winter's dotage. 

The woodbine takes the westering tints — 
The hectic flush — ere dying ; 

The golden-rod, torch-like, flames up, 
The waning sun defying ; 



122 SEPTEMBER. 

The Mother-Earth has worn her robe 
Of green and floral beauty, 

Until, by heat and rains caressed, 
She's filled her round of duty. 

The squirrels dart from wall to wall, 

Or balance on their haunches, 
To nibble on the last year's store, 

And watch the chestnut branches • 
The katydids scold in the wood. 

In rough, falsetto voices, 
Where tuneful notes of summer song 

Are hushed by harsher noises. 

The night-owl, in the thicket, wails 

In tones of melancholy, 
As if bemoaning in its age 

Its years of youthful folly ; 
The parent-robin broods alone 

Within the shadowy gloaming — 
Thinking, perchance, of empty nests. 

And children gone a-roaming. 

The red light from the harvest moon 
Illumes the stilly places ; 

The fleecy islands cast their shapes 
Above the forest spaces ; 

The hills are hung in misty veils 
Beyond the glistening river ; 



UNEXPRESSED. 

And fallow thoughts blend with the heart 
Of memory, dreaming ever. 

So Nature, in her fitful moods, 

Conjures her fleeting splendor 
To draw from out the harp of life 

The sadder tones and tender ; 
And I, who know these lingering days, 

The days that crown September, 
Summon the deeper thoughts, to wake 

The loves that I remember. 



123 



UNEXPRESSED. 



More elusive than a dream ; 

Finer than a fairy's song. 
Than a rift of sunny gleam 

Through the woodland's leafy throng ; 

Subtle as a piercing glance. 

Dashed with tint of joy or pain, 

Are the vivid thoughts that 'trance 
The dull rapture of the brain. 

Fancies, without words to tell 

Whence they come, or where depart, — 
Like wild odors in the cell 

Of the rose, they haunt the heart. 



124 UNEXPRESSED. 

What time in the lavish Spring 
The glad bosom thrills with bliss, 

Soft they glide on viewless wing, 
Light, and vanish like a kiss. 

Whisper of a joy that 's passed ; 

Touch the secret of a tear ; 
Gild a hope that cannot last ; 

Lisp a name thou wouldst not hear. 

Birdlings are they of the mind, 
Leaving but a wizard trail ; 

For, alas, thou canst not find 
Where they lurk behind the veil. 

Laughters from the eddying rill, 
Murmuring a plaintive glee ; 

Monotones that inly fill 

From the billows of the sea. 

Passions, laden with a sigh ; 

Matchless sunsets in the soul ; 
Sorrows that down deeply lie, 

Which no earthly knell can toll. 

Heights whereon, in heavenly mood, 
Hearts may mount in rhapsody ; 

Loves that poets oft have wooed 
In a moment's ecstasy. 



INDIAN SUMMER. I25 

Songs without the voice they are ; 

Music from a stringless lyre ; 
Flecks of light that, faint and far, 

Lure the longings of desire. 

Spirits of the earth and sky. 

Plumed to clip the peopled air ; 

Seek not where they form or fly. 
Thou canst never fathom where. 

Write them in a poet's rhyme ? 

Bind them to the lips of men ? 
Chain them with the tether. Time ? 

Nay, they '11 slip thy narrow ken ! 



INDIAN SUMMER. 



A dreamy haze of light ; a fair deceiver ; 

A ghost of summer's solstice, whose feigned smile 
Half counterfeits the real ; ah, false retriever ; 

Yet art a sweet consoler in thy guile. 

What gentle warmth, what odors from the valleys 
Drug the duped senses with their luring stealth ! 

The fancy drinks again from May's sweet chalice, 
And revels in its fairy land of wealth. 



126 INDIAN SUMMER. 

It is the Autumn's dotage — mid-November — 
When skies, seductive, seem to woo the earth ; 

When e'en the flowers, if living, would remember 
The softer airs that swayed them at their birth. 

The flowers, alas ! their perfumes have departed : 
Along the streamlet's marge and upland path 

Vainly I search for them, till, lonely-hearted, 
I pluck, despondingly, the aftermath. 

Within the barren depths of woodland yonder 
I seem to hear the bluebirds carolling. 

And silently through reedy thickets wander, 
To find there but the mockeries of Spring. 

The thrushes, where are they, whose notes re- 
sounded 

When all the air was vocal in the June ? 
Their echoes then, from hill to vale rebounded, 

But now are banished out of time and tune. 

The strolling piper blows a shrilly whistle ; 

The hunter calls his dogs from hedge and quail ; 
The maiden plucks the last-blown downy thistle. 

And homeward, singing, tracks the beaten trail. 

The banners of the forest fields have faded. 
And rustle in the lowly ways beneath ; 

The sleepy solitudes that once they shaded, 

Now, desolate, cherish them like some dead 
wreath. 



AH, LOWLY SPEAKS THE VOICE OF DEATH. 127 

And Still the waning sunlit glories linger 
To fire the dying embers with their gleam, 

Until Death touches all with ominous finger, 
And frowns with frozen visage on the dream. 

What are these days to lives that feel their sad- 
ness ? — 
Pale phantoms call them not ; they breathe the 
past, 
Of Summer steeped in radiance and gladness — 
The Paradise of earth, that could not last. 

They hallow in the thought, as dear reminders. 
The youth, the loves, the friendships that are 
gone, 

And teach the heart, though these are left behind us, 
To hold its treasures for another morn ! 



"AH, LOWLY SPEAKS THE VOICE OF 
DEATH." 



Ah, lowly speaks the voice of Death, 
When on the heart it breaks, 

Yet, how with woe it thrills the breath, 
And cries of anguish wakes. 

It echoes love, but love that tells 
How vain is this of ours, 



128 AH, LOWLY SPEAKS THE VOICE OF DEATH. 

Whose throbbings mingle with sad knells, 
And perish with the flowers. 

We stretch out blindly with our hands. 

We strain our eyes to meet 
The eyes that dawn on viewless lands ; 

The life we cannot greet. 

O God, that we could give our own. 

In toils and hardships drear. 
To win the spirit back that's flown, 

And hold its image near ! 

Yet Death, thou hast a meaning deep, 

Whose mystery, unsealed. 
Would dry the eyes that vainly weep, 

And cure the hearts unhealed. 

The secret of thy holier truth, — 

The faith sublimely great — 
'Tis ours to learn through love and ruth, 

And patience that must wait. 



HEART OF GOLD. 



129 



HEART OF GOLD. 



What matter, though the world be alien cold^ 
Though to the finer senses it but deign 
A cheerless answer, making light of gain 
That stirs our swift, divining thoughts, to hold 
Us thrall in some sublimer wish untold ? 
What matter, so that music yield its strain 
To thrill, fair love its rapture and its pain, 
And the vast future pledge its heart of gold ? 
Though the deft schemes of men may sink to loss. 
Though withering care may sere the edge of sense. 
Though jeweled fortune fade to feathery dross. 
If but these soul-lit joys remain intense. 
Freighted with longing, winged with Argos sails. 
Deem not that life is barren, Heaven avails ! 



130 WOMAN-WISE. 



WOMAN-WISE. 



Man is not wise above the rarer grace 

Of woman-wise. To wield his weapons wrought 

Of steely metal drawn from polished thought ; 

With well-trained speech to run some wordy race, 

Or sturdily with iron will to trace 

Some drudging task that early he was taught, — 

These are his powers, from the world's armory 

brought. 
But hers are spirit-shielded, as in lace ; 
Elastic, free, on intuition's wing 
Of radiant thought she says her sweeter say ; 
Her heart-life melodies, inbreathing, sing 
To dreams the " heat and burden of the day," 
While love, ethereal, endows her sphere, 
And makes her wiser than the wisest seer. 



LOVE S FAITH. I3I 



LOVE'S FAITH. 



Beneath the shadow of the hill, 

On eastern slopes, she sings and sighs ; 

And waiting by the lonely rill, 

Her pulse with its wild ripple vies. 

The birds that westward take their flight, 
And every wind that sweeps the sea. 

Bear on their courses toward the night 
Some message from, her heart to thee. 

To thee ! for in the golden mists 
Of the far western clime, is one 

Who waits, but waits in vain, and wists. 
And dreams and muses of his own. 

By every barque that sets its sail, 
On all the tides that eastward flow. 

He answers, through the calm or gale, 
A love that only two can know. 

From west to east, from east to west. 
The birds they fly, the tides reply ; 

Two hearts, alas ! may never rest. 
For love that waits but cannot die. 



132 BROKEN-HEARTED. 

And, fainter, murmur o'er the sea 
Two voices that are never still : 

** O maid, I may not come to thee, 
Nor woo thee by thy lonely rill." 

And she : " Thy lips I may not kiss, 
In eyes of thine may never gaze, 

But Heaven will crown a love like this, 
That vainly waits through earthly days." 



BROKEN-HEARTED. 



She gathered buds in the maiden June, 
For her coronal of bridal flowers ; 

Her bosom throbbed as it kept in tune 
With songs of birds to the matin hours. 

The wreath she wove was moistened with dew, 
With tears of joy from her love-lit eyes. 

Her lips moved to a song that was new, 
A song for the morning's sun to rise. 

She plucked the green from the ivied wall, 
She twined its sheaves in her waving hair. 

To wait the voice of her lover's call ; 
The flush on her cheek was crimson fair. 



BROKEN-HEARTED. I33 

O doomful hours that die in the shade, 

Ere the virgin web of life is spun ; 
O crimson cheeks that sicken and fade, 

For grief that wakes ere another sun. 

He never came ; to her fevered sense 
No dews revived the flowers at night ; 

The moon shone not, for her wild suspense 
Had dimmed her eyes to its silvery light. 

She took no heed of the night-bell's toll, 
The perfume from her blossoms was gone ; 

The morrow's sun had set in her soul 
Ere she saw its radiant glory dawn. 

The seasons that passed were lost to her ; 

For her no Autumn its harvest shed ; 
In her Winter-breast the chill frosts were ; 

Her heart of love was silent and dead. 

She plucked the green from the ivied wall, 

But oh, the green of another day ! 
She saw the seared leaves flutter and fall. 

As love from her life had fallen away. 

The long year passed ; in a maiden June 

They twined young blossoms, to crown her hair ; 

E'en the birds seemed sad and out of tune — 
They missed her song in the lonely air. 



134 LONGFELLOW. 

Save murmuring brook or breeze, no sound 
Disturbs the vale where they laid her low ; 

Wild flowers steal softly from her mound- 
Earth's angels — to watch, who loved her so. 



LONGFELLOW.* 

[March 24, 1881.] 



His day is spent, and he is dead ; 
The Nestor-poet's silvered head 
Is lying low, as sad and slow. 
They bear him to his hollow bed. 

His lips a voiceless silence keep ; 
He sleeps, alas, a mortal sleep ; 
His rayless eye cannot reply 
To other eyes that vainly weep. 

No more, through sinuous tones, his song, 
In fresh-drawn notes shall move along ; 
No magic theme through him shall dream 
In rhythmic music to the throng. 

We call it Death ; — it cannot be ! 
From land to land, from sea to sea, 
A winged fame has borne his name ; 
No Death can still his minstrelsy. 



THE CLOUDED MIND. I35 

O, poet of the golden lyre, 
O, glory of our western choir, 
Thy living page, from age to age. 
Shall light with an immortal fire ! 



THE CLOUDED MIND. 



I know not when the glory fled — 
The spirit-light that filled his mind, 

But now its rays are dark and dead. 

His words are strange, his thought is blind. 

I speak his name, no voice replies ; 

I gaze into his eyes, and lo, 
They but return their blank surprise 

For loving looks of long ago ! 

He murmurs in some alien tone 

The wild falsetto of his brain, 
As reason, fettered on its throne, 

Laments its hapless bonds in vain. 

I sing familiar songs, I read 

The chosen books he once had known ; 
Alas ! they but enhance the need ; 

I sing and read as if alone. 



136 THE CLOUDED MIND. 

Sweet friendships and companions dear 
Are banished from his soul distraught ; 

His world is closed to joy and fear, 
And love is exiled from his heart. 

With aimless wanderings, — as in dreams — 
He gropes through fields and forest ways. 

He strolls along the lowland streams, 
And counts the hours of vacant days ; 

Yet sometimes, when the Autumn light 
Sinks, deepening, in the western skies, 

I hear, as from the lowering night, 
A vagrant note of sadness rise ; 

A sudden gleam, a moment's boon, 

Has touched his thought, as now he sings 

Some snatch, some fragment of a tune 
That memory out of chaos brings. 

Then, on his lonely life again. 

The brooding shadows denser fall. 

To quench the spark that lit his brain. 
To shroud it in their midnight pall. 

Still waiting, waiting, longingly, 
As years of endless days go past, 

I watch for reason's mild decree, — 
For light and love to reign at last. 



THE MYSTER 137 



THE MYSTERY. 



Cold winds of Winter swept the place 
Where one, in grief, had borne her own ; 
The frosts had sheathed each marble stone, 

And chilled the tears upon her face. 

She laid the little form to rest 

Whose soul had gone to Him who gave ; 

She bent above the open grave, 
And felt the void within her breast. 

Ere yet the moon had waned, and lo ! 
Another of her life was slain 
Of Death, that palled her heart again. 

And smote it with a tearless woe. 

Two lay together, side by side. 

And o'er their winter mounds were wreathed 
The buds that parting love bequeathed, 

Dying, alas ! as they had died. 

Sometime from those two mounds shall spring, 
From living stems, the buds again, 
Updrawn by Summer's suns and rain, 

Blossoms of Nature's nurturing. 



138 GREETING. 

" Sometime," the childless mother said, 
" My waiting heart may go to mine. 

Where, cherished by a thought divine, 
The loves shall blossom that are dead." 



1863-1883. 
GREETING. 



I give thee greeting — thou, my wedded heart ; 
Through the fair seasons of so many a year 
Thou hast bestowed thy benediction dear, 
On a more shadowed life than thine ; thou art 
A sunny clime, a light that dost impart 
Thy radiance with more than blithesome cheer ; 
A golden lining, when dark clouds appear, — 
To shed thy rays, unconscious of the art. 
Though all else fail, thy constancy will last ; 
The bond that holds us thrall I may not plead, 
'Tis tried and true, and needs no verse or rhyme ; 
I gaze into thy face, I hold thee fast, 
I print love's kiss on thy sweet lips, and lead 
Thee forth through all the shoals and deeps of time ! 



AT SUNSET, 139 



AT SUNSET. 
SONGS WITHOUT WORDS. 



Soft, like a stolen calm, their echoes rest, 
Above the worn and grievous burdened soul : 
The harsh world loses now its dull control ; 
O, rapt Imagination, thou art blest ! 
Out of the molten glory of the west, 
From the low sunset-bells that faintly toll. 
Commingling, as in one dear, ransomed whole. 
Comes now the music that I love the best — 
Music without the noisy organ-peal. 
Without the chorus or the dulcet string, 
Unwritten, silent to the sensuous ear, 
Strains all unheard, but which the heart can feel. 
Vague voices of the memory, murmuring 
The tears and laughters in some halcyon year. 



I40 FIDELITY A SONG. 



FIDELITY— A SONG. 



The heart that must ever possess her 

Is exiled to ocean deeps, 
And the love that never can bless her 

A fathomless silence keeps. 
Yet the wild sea-surge, in its sighing. 

Has whispered no pang to her breast, 
While hope in her bosom, undying, 

Beats high in its billowy rest. 

No mirth ever melts her to laughter. 

No melody thrills her with bliss ; 
But a thought of her lover comes after, 

And mingles her spirit with his. 
Her longing, unburdened by sorrow. 

No fear of her fancy can dim ; 
Her tears are the dreams of to-morrow 

That crystal with visions of him. 

She listens to the songsters of Summer, 
To the fitful fountains at play. 

And lends to their musical murmur 
A song to her love far away. 

She hears, in the cadence of ocean, 
His passion low- voiced in the wave. 



FIDELITY A SONG. I4I 

And breathes him a double devotion, 
A seal for the troth that she gave. 

Alas for the rose of the morning ! 

The night-frost withers its bloom ; 
Or the lustre of hope in its dawning, 

(A phantom that fades in the gloom) ; 
And alack for the years that are wasted 

In music that dies on the air — 
For a bliss that never is tasted, 

For a joy that wanes to despair ! 

She sits by the sea in the gloaming ; 

She sighs for her lover of yore ; 
Her heart o'er the ocean is roaming, 

As she waits on its desolate shore ; 
Yet the love that never can bless her 

A fathomless silence keeps : 
The heart that must ever possess her 

Is exiled to ocean deeps. 



142 MUTE THY LIPS. 



"MUTE THY LIPS." 



Clay thou art, a lifeless thing, 

Hands and feet and form of earth ; 

Clay thou art, the fatal sting 

Robbed thee of thy precious worth. 

To the grave they bore thy dust. 
O'er thy bier they read the rite ; 

Ah ! so soon thy likeness must 
Crumble from my eager sight ! 

^< Where," I asked, "has fled the ray 
From thy soft, entreating eye ? 

What cold fate has borne away 
The deep passion-laden sigh ? 

**■ Where are Love and Sorrow gone, — 
Banished from thine empty breast ? 

In what viewless realm, forlorn, 
Art thou waiting to be blest ? 

^* Where the music of thy song ? 

Where the Heaven of thy prayer ? 
Do they to the earth belong, 

Only its frail dreams to share ? " 



SKY-TOP. 143 

" Comes no answer from the tomb ? 

Hast no message, thou, to tell 
Of elysian shades, in bloom. 

Where the mystic spirits dwell ? 

*' Comes no word to mortal men ? " 
Mute thy lips ! — O, could they speak, 

What diviner thoughts would then 
Crown a faith that is so weak ! 

Yet, alas ! I cannot say ; 

Only this, my Love, my Own, — 
Since thy soul has led the way, 

Mine must follow thine, alone ! 



" SKY-TOP." 



The birds had left their mountain nests ; 

The air was still ; no throb of song 

Beat its pulsation clear, along 
The old, deserted, crannied rests. 

The birds had left ; I wondered why, — 
Why in those lofty crowns of Time, 
Where Nature's grandeur sleeps sublime. 

The birds disdained to live and die. 



144 SKY-TOP. 

I wondered why the dainty " blue," 
The thrush, the oriole, the jay, 
Had flown from their wild cliffs away, 

To lowly haunts and valleys new. 

Ah, sweet, we upward, upward fly ! 
We seek the skyey tops ; we strain 
Our eyes afar to span the plain. 

And yet — and yet, I wonder why 

We turn us to the vales below — 

Of earth — and cherish their dull wealth ? 
Why glean their fruits, as if by stealth 

To hoard the treasures they bestow ? 

Poor human thought, it cannot rise ; 

It sinks, it falters as it climbs ; 

Its music lacks the heavenly rhymes, 
Its sense is dazzled with the skies. 

The valleys call and it obeys ; 
Forgetting its diviner birth 
It craves the glory of the earth. 

And follows in the beaten ways : 

Then why not birds ? They, too, may long, 
While dreaming on the mountain pine, 
Unmindful of their home divine, 

To win earth's fortunes for a song. 



H. W. L. 145 

H. W. L. 

MARCH 24, 1882. 



A flower bloomed forth in a western land, 
With petals of lily, and gold, and rose ; 
It scattered its seeds on every hand, 

And laded the air with its perfumed blows ; 
It sent its shoots o'er heather and fen, 
And gladdened the common ways of men. 

Its rhythmic colors, and magic charm, 

In manifold mixture of beauty blent : 
It bore in its heart a healing balm ; 
Some said it was an exotic sent, 

And others, who missed its secret dower, 
Declared it only a common flower. 

The wind, the heat, the night, and the rain, 

All tempered it with their mellowing clime ; 
The seasons came and went again, 

As it bloomed afresh in the blight of time ; 
Its heralds sped far o'er sea and shore, 
And around the world its banners bore. 

Wherever the eye of man could see. 
Or ever the soul of man could feel, 



146 THE FLOWER AND THE TREE. 

There blossomed its beauteous harmony, 
And there its chaliced virtue to heal ; 
Its heart was in the land of its birth, 
But its gentle spirit pervaded the earth. 

Then there came a season, a day, an hour, 

When its ripened lustre dimmed and died ; 
Men mourn the loss of the peerless flower, 
That healed, and sweetened, and beautified ; 
Sometime the world, outwearing its grief, 
The flower will find in a fadeless sheaf. 



THE FLOWER AND THE TREE. 



Sad poetess she who sings in the shade 

Of grief that is born to the ripening years ; 

Who'd bloom, like the flower, to droop and to fade 
Ere bitterness blind her soul with its tears ; 

Who would burden the air with odorous sweets 
From the cell of the fairy's secret nook. 

Or bud and blossom in Eden retreats, 

To revel in dreams with the birds and the brook ; 

To hold the chalice of joy to the skies 

And catch the sun and the dew in its brim, 

To toy with the bees and the gold butterflies, 
Or nod to the loves that answer her whim ; 



THE FLOWER AND THE TREE. 147 

To live in beauty, to languish and die, 
Exhaling her soul on the summer breath, 

No question to ask of the mystery, why 
She bore the burden of life and of death. 

Methinks I would grow, with the passage of time, 
Like the nobler tree, till my deepening bands 

Should steal the spoil of the loam and the lime, 
And feed on the heart of the teeming lands. 

Till my stripling years were passed, and the wind 
Might temper my foils in its eager chase, 

And the storms might blind, and the tempest bind,. 
And grapple me in its mighty embrace. 

Then the sun might fire my heart with its own. 
And Winter impale with its icy bars ; 

Then the night might fall and leave me alone, 
I'd welcome the fire, the frost, and the stars. 

So they fill and thrill my life with their balm. 
And blend their subtle emotions to train 

My sinewy form in a passionate calm, 

I'd drink of their spirit and vanquish the pain. 

Ah, then, when I'd won, through travail and toil^ 
The kingdom of earth, with its rich empire, 

I'd plead exemption and peace from its moil, 
And longingly breathe my prayer of desire. 



148 SEEDS, THE ENGINEER. 



SEEDS, THE ENGINEER. 



Seeds was the man on the Penn. Railroad ; 

Seeds was the engineer ; 
Six hundred souls behind him rode. 

When the flames shot out to the rear ; 
The flames flashed out from the engine's breath. 

And fired the laden air ; 
To stay at his post was worse than death, 

To fly was the hope of despair. 

With a dash he cleared the deadly heat 

And stood on the foremost car, 
While his engine flew o'er the iron street 

Like a devil let loose for war. 
Six hundred panic-stricken hearts 

In breathless horror wait. 
As the train, with thund'rous rumblings, darts 

And bounds along to its fate. 

Seeds was the one, the only man 

To check the demon race ; 
He stood like a statue in the van 

With the glare of the flame in his face, 
Not a muscle moved ; a look of disdain, 

A shudder — but not for fear, — 



SEEDS, THE ENGINEER. I49 

Then a plunge in the hell of fire again 
To his post as engineer. 

The hush of the shadow of death was there ; 

Hope hung by a single thread ; 
A minute seemed longer than a year — 

That minute of terrible dread ; 
A grating sound, a slackened speed, 

A swaying to and fro, 
And a hero had saved, by a hero's deed, 

Who knows, of nameless woe ! 

A seared form, naked, and speechless, and faint. 

Crept out of the fiery mass ; 
'Twas Seeds. Ah, noble as ever a saint, 

He who braved that terrible pass ! 
Let his memory haunt the hearts of men 

In scorn of their selfish greed, 
And the world shall echo its great Amen ! 

For the crowning of his deed. 



150 VICTORY. 



VICTORY. 



Say not that absence dissipates 

The bond that makes two spirits one ; 
That love is true of earth, alone ; 

That death must sever human fates ; 
I know a friend whose simple ways — 
And blest, outlive her mortal days. 

Death touched her, but through years of grace 

The spirit, clinging by a thread 

To her frail image, hourly shed 
Its beauty in her soul and face ; 

A ray from some divine light, given 

To link and lead her life to heaven. 

Sweet words were hers, no other speech 
So gentle, bearing, like the flowers 
That fade within the fleeting hours, 

A fragrance far beyond their reach ; 
Words, too, that lips may not express. 
Save from a fount of loveliness. 



No poor pretence, no mocking deeds 
Of charity, for others' praise, 



VICTORY. 151 

Were feigned by her ; no vain displays 
To win fair words ; she knew the needs 
That pressed the lowly to despair, 
And brought her gifts with them to share. 

If beauty came from God, she knew 
That beauty only came with good ; 
Her rarer nature understood 

The graces hid from human view ; 
The gospel scheme of life, with her, 
Must needs be wrought in character. 

Her crowning victories were defeat ; 

Her highest joys were born in pain ; 

Her reverent sorrowings were gain ; 
Fit fruitage for a soul so meet. 

Wearing its bitter weeds, content 

That they were given — divinely sent. 

Serene and beautiful, at peace. 

Though burdened, caring but for this. 
That all her days might be like His, 

Till heaven should bring its sweet release ; 
Unmurmuring for the thorns that press. 
Since earth would end in blessedness. 

I plucked fresh flowers, on that calm morn, 
To wreathe her grave, yet felt it true 



152 NOVEMBER. 

That thought would blossom, ever new, 
With fragrant memories of her, gone : 

That in near, friendly hearts would spring 
Love's flowers, more fair than hands could 
bring. 



NOVEMBER. 



There is no blossom in the field ; 

The fierce winds lash the naked wood ; 
Barren and cold, the gray hills yield 

Their hearts to winter solitude ; 
Night folds its dusk across the sheen of day, 
And bleak November sows the seed of May. 

Wild storms and ghostly echoes wake 
The sullen silence. Nature's smile 

Plays on a frozen face, to break, 
Despairingly, the gloom, awhile. 

Then dips behind its snowy veil of cloud — 

That sifts adown to earth an ermine shroud. 

November sows the seed of May ; 

But ere the germ shall feel the spell, 
The touch that pulses into play. 

Death lays it in a narrow cell ; 
Death holds it fast in Winter's icy breath. 
In Winter's tomb, till life is born of death. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW. 153 

O Hope, exiled to hopelessness, 

Pierced by the chill, the ghost of May, 

Smitten where once thou felt a kiss. 
Night-blinded where was glorious day. 

Thou, too, must die of frost, and press the tomb 

Awhile, ere yet thy life may come to bloom. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW. 



I hear the birds singing blithely, the birds of a van- 
ished June, 

And green are the boughs, and sweet are the vows 
That mix in the airy tune. 
And the radiant glory of Summer, 

In its flush, untarnished fire. 
Is mingled with passions that murmur 

With an affluence of desire. 

Still lingers the violet's beauty ; the odor of its 
perfume 

Floats upward, away, on the wings of May, 
To blend in the golden loom ; 
And the heart of the lover is wooing, 

And the heart of the maiden yields, 
Till the lips, full-ripened with suing. 

Are kissing in blooming fields. 



154 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 

I hear the voices of children in the noon of the 
silent year, 

Their faces I see, and their laughter and glee 
I hear, yet I do not hear. 
Ah ! children, thy tones, like a spirit. 

Fade away, as a dream that has fled. 
Their echo, how faintly I hear it. 

Through the aisles of the year that is dead ! 

And Autumn has gone, with its harvest ; its crim- 
son, hectic leaves 

Lie withered in death, in the frosty breath, — 
For the reapers have gathered their sheaves ; 
And the gales of wild December 

Bear their waves against the sky, 
But the loves that I remember 

Shall never — ah ! never die ! 

How bleak are the hills and forests, like a shadow 
on the heart ! 

The birds and their lay have died away. 
With the year so loath to depart ; 
Yet there comes from whither — oh ! whither, 

A faith that heralds a day 
When never again shall wither 

The loves and the longings of May ; 

When lilies will bloom forever, and beauty will 
never pale ; 
When the songs of June will keep in tune 



GIVE US THIS DAY. 155 

With hopes that never will fail ; 
When the voices of children, forever, 

Will sound through the blessed spheres, 
And death no more will sever 

The loves of earthly years ! 



" GIVE US, THIS DAY." 



** Give us, this day, our daily bread," unthinking, 

said 
The child at night ; the meaning of the upward 
flight 
Of that low prayer, it could not tell ; 
It knew the words by heart, so well. 
Yet, bending at its nightly shrine, could not divine 
The heavenly theme, which seemed a far-off wonder- 
dream. 

The years they swiftly came and fled ; unheeding 

said 
The youth, again, the prayer that seemed not all in 
vain, 
" Give us, this day, our daily bread ; " 
And brightly shone about his head 
The gloried happiness of earth, — its joy and mirth ; 
The bread it came, though prayer to him was but a 
name. 



156 GIVE US THIS DAY. 

The child, the youth, to manhood grew, and 

rougher blew 
The storms of life, and deepening sorrow, sterner 

strife. 
Bore down upon his toiling brain ; 
" Give us our daily bread," again 
He said ; the answer came in death, that hushed 

the breath 
Of one his love had worshipped more than all 

above. 

And swiftly, yet, the answer came, as in a flame, 
To try his soul, and from his eager grasp it stole 

The jewelled fortune he had wrought ; 

And, as, again, he blindly sought, 
By utterance of the daily prayer, the daily share 
Of bread to win, there came a vision of his sin. 

And now, whene'er the prayer he said, there rose 

the dead 
One in his heart. " O God, thy hand hath sent the 
dart ; 
But she whose steps I oft have led, 
I hear her voice, — she is not dead ; 
In ceaseless murmurs of the sea, she whispers me ; 
In every prayer her spirit guides my spirit there." 

"Give us, this day, our daily bread," the worn man 

said ; 
His weary soul now toiled no more for earthly toll ; 



THE UNSENT MISSIVE. 157 

Now he had found the holy bread 

Above the wreck of earthly dead ; 
Beyond the valley of despair, beyond the prayer, 
A Christly light illumed the way, — it was not 
night. 

Age whitened on his crested brow ; a heavenly 

vow 
Long years had led his soul in prayer for heavenly 

bread. 
The Cross, in him, was lifted high, 
A sign of faith that could not die ; 
Till in his life it wrought a calm, a nameless 

charm, 
And still he said, " Give us, this day, our daily 

bread." 



THE UNSENT MISSIVE. 



In a dingy attic room, 

'Midst its lumbered solitude- 
Brooding in its musty gloom. 
Sat a man in dreamy mood 
There, alone ; — 
Holding in his hand a letter 
Written years agone. 



158 THE UNSENT MISSIVE, 

Neither old nor young was he, 

Scarcely wrinkled, touched with gray, 
Bachelor of third degree. 

Past the age — ah, well-a-day ! 
And he read, — 
From the oaken chest a letter ; 
Something from the dead. 

Pale was he, for there his vow, 

" Love thee," written by his hand ; 
Dated years ago, till now 

Left unbroken, seal and band. 
Made to her, — 
He a lover, tender-hearted. 
Wrote it once, to her. 

Twenty years, alas ! had gone : 
Resting on his hand awhile, 
Mused he of the halcyon morn, 
Felt the radiance of her smile ; 
Where was she ? 
Her sweet face, almost forgotten. 
Would he ever see ? 

Twenty years the missive lay 

Lost, while he had thought it sent 

On its mission ; day by day, 
Bitter in his discontent. 
Waited he 



THE UNSENT MISSIVE. 159 

For the coming of her answer : 
Cursed the maiden he ! 

Then he lived in scorn of her, — 

Till, corroding in his breast, 
Hate had left him shorn of her 
For a passion never blest ; 
Now, a change, 
In a flood of memory, thrilled him 
With emotion strange. 

Love came back, and hatred fled ; 
Form and face and accent now, 
Came to him from out the dead, — 
With the sealed and banded vow. 
Love — the truth — 
Lost and found, an unread secret, 
From the heart of youth. 

But the maiden, she had gone : 

Only there her image dwelt, 
A mute phantom inly born. 
Ever seen and ever felt. 
Blessed ideal — 
In the current of his being — 
Came to be the real. 

Wed was he forevermore ; 

Life and love and spirit wed ; 



l6o WASHINGTON IRVING. 

Could not seek her, dare not know her, 
Living, she to him were dead. 
Memory wrought 
Her fair vision, as an angel's, 
In his world of thought. 



WASHINGTON IRVING.' 

1783-1883. 



Distant we stand, as if, from some far main, 
We viewed a wide expanse of wave and strand, 
Till, midway in the Eastern glimpse of land, 
Our vision greets a mountain on the plain. 

Time, distance, cannot veil our wistful eyes, 
The lofty peak stands ever as before. 
And we, while gazing from the level shore, 
See, now, its form in stainless lustre rise. 

Clear sky and golden beauty bathe the height, 
Serene it lifts its airy crest to fame. 
Above the need or care of praise or blame, — 
A fadeless summit clothed in robes of light. 

So stands our Irving of a hundred years, 
Loved master in the field of lettered lore, 



WASHINGTON IRVING. l6l 

Whose brow first bore the crown, and nobly wore 
Its circling nimbus far above his peers. 

He missed the unsheathed sword, the battle plain, 
That won for liberty her fair increase, 
But kept his birthday in the year of peace, — 
The nation's jubilee from strife and pain. 

He taught our embryo empire in its youth, 
That art was loyal to its natal cause ; 
And wrote of gentler manners, kindlier laws. 
Of beauty bred in common ways of truth. 

From the wild haunts of brooding solitude, 
From old traditions steeped in romance dear, 
He brought his marvels to the duller ear, 
And in the heart a finer fancy wooed. 

He had the poet's music and his dream. 

His wanton imagery, without his song, 

Yet deftly wrought, in rhythms pure and strong, — 

Idyllic like — the legend of his theme. 

To him was given the charmed magician's hand, 
To weave, with all, a mystic tale of love, 
Or some sweet spell, the spirit-life to move. 
And win it captive by his potent wand. 

An affluent soul was his, that made man kin, 
A genial humor graced with beauteous speech, 



l62 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

Evoking tears and laughter, blessed to teach 
A purer accent to the voice within. 

What fair creation has his genius wrought ! 
What witcheries — in peopling yon lone vale — • 
He wove into the texture of a tale, 
And fashioned in the fancy of his thought ! 

The tides that bore him once to Eastern lands, 
Come back to-day, resounding, as they came 
Long years ago, with echoes of his name. 
And sweep their messages across our sands. 

Till we, within the shadow of his home, 
Bless the full radiance of his renown. 
That breaks, benign, beyond the sea and town, 
Unvexed by other lights that go and come. 

And, through the centuries, we see afar. 
His glory — nothing dimmed from age to age — 
In panegyrics, light the living page, 
To pledge for him the orbit of a star. 



NIGHT WATCHES. — CHRISTMAS. 163 



NIGHT WATCHES. 



Only the shrouding gloom can unfold 
The skyey chart with its worlds of gold ; 

Only the darkness can make the night 

A fathomless miracle of light ! 

Only the shadow of night in the heart 
Reveals to the soul the heavenly chart ; 
Only the darkness that falls at our feet 
Can make the meaning of God complete ! 



CHRISTMAS. 



I've heard the lark in Summer, winged high, 
Sing in the heavenly ether till, ere long, 

It seemed to melt — a spirit in the sky — 
Still pouring forth its liquid notes of song. 

I've heard in Autumn months the throstle sing 
A very harvest song, so tender sweet ! 

As if, in blissful joyance, it would bring 
A heartful sacrifice of praises meet. 



164 THE DEAD YEAR. 

But in the Winter, when the year is old, 

And birds have flown, and the broad, barren earth 

Is bound in frigid bands, and bitter cold, — 
When all is dead, the heart warms into mirth ; 

And anthemed voices choir, and Christ is sung ; 

The bells ring wildly through the crispy air ; 
The breezes waft it, 'tis on every tongue, — 

'Tis Christmas ! Merry Christmas everywhere ! 



THE DEAD YEAR." 



Along the shores of Time the lights are burning 
That mark the distant years, long time we sped, 
The years that now are dead. 
No alchemy of life shall herald their returning, 
Those fragments wrecked by the "relentless hand" 
Far on the wasted strand. 

How dimly burn the lights ! till now, there glistens 

One more, one more to mock the hollow eye 

Of Time's departed sage. 

In vain, in vain the ear of memory listens, 

For only silence echoes back again 

The heart's own voiceless strain. 



THE DEAD YEAR. 165 

And is the past a dream, some peopled vision ? 

Is it the phantom of a pageant gone ? 

Has it no other morn ? 

No life beyond this fleet delusive mission ? 

Is nothing left but some historic scroll, 

The ashes of the soul ? 

The song, the sigh, the inward, nameless sorrow ; 
The death-throb of some heart, some blessed friend ; 
The wrong, the right amend. 

That held the conscience clear, in the to-morrow ; 
The wild joy fired by some ambitious scheme, — 
Are these an idle dream ? 

The high trust born, the strong hope knit to heaven, 

The faith transcendent, conquering the grave ; 

The sacrifice to save ; 

The crescent love from heart to heart once given, — 

Is none of all this subtle influence, spent. 

To some fair future lent ? 

Sure, every day is a divine presaging ; 

Nor art, nor life is lost to human good ; 

Even our daily food 

Decrees some ransom than the sheer assuaging 

Of the hungered flesh, as sap to flower 

Yields an ethereal dower. 

O count not waste the year that has departed, 
For its fair beauty here, shall reappear 



l66 ABIDE WITH ME. 

In some sublimer sphere, 

Its frailest good shall leave men fuller-hearted, 
And the pure essence of its earthly spell 
Live after its own knell. 



"ABIDE WITH ME." 



"Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," 
A simple maiden sang, with artless feeling ; 
*' The darkness deepens. Lord, with me abide," 
While in her voice the tender accents stealing, 
Fell, softly as the dying day, 
From those sweet lips, and died away. 

^* Abide with me," she could not know the plea, — 

The utter consecration, — in her dreaming ; 

Joy, like a bird, made life a melody. 

And Spring, its sun, along her pathway beaming, 
Stirred her young heart with gentle fires, 
And quickened it with sweet desires. 

*' The darkness deepens," slowly fell the sound. 
As if with plaintive grief the notes were laden. 
Yet not a sorrow had her bosom owned, 
Nor ever sadness touched the lovely maiden ; 

How could she sing " Abide with me," 

Or know its hidden mystery ? 



ABIDE WITH ME. 167 

*' The darkness deepens," and the years go by ; 

The maiden 'neath the shadows oft has wandered ; 

Joy, like a bird, has left its nest to fly. 

And bonds of love and happiness are sundered ; 
Lo, all the friendliness of earth 
Has taken wings, with joy and mirth. 

Despair, the tearless offspring of all woe, — 
The lonely progeny of a world of sorrow, — 
Has turned upon her, like a sudden foe, 
To snatch Hope's only legacy — To-morrow ; 

And, shuddering, in her dumb distress. 

She drinks the cup of bitterness. 

O Life ! she knows the anguish of its cross, — 
Love turned to hate, and blessings to reverses, — 
She, too, has felt the fever of remorse. 
With its deep dregs of agony and curses ; 
"When helpers fail and comforts flee," 
She dare not plead, " Abide with me." 

Her voice, it will not sing, the notes are dead ; 
But in their stead, like some pale phantom, haunting. 
Weird echoes, through her memory, mocking dread. 
Breathe the dead song her aching heart is wanting ; 

" Abide with me " she cannot sing, 

But mutely brings the offering. 

^'Fast falls the eventide" ; yet, to her eyes. 
The golden light of morn is faintly dawning ; 



l68 NAY, TOUCH THEM NOT. 

" Earth's joys grow dim," but from eternal skies 
Is borne the answer to her spirit's longing ; 
And now, as " falls the eventide," 
She whispers, " Lord, with me abide." 

She knows it now, the faith that comes at last ; 
Child of the pang and travail of her spirit, 
Born of the withering passions of the past. 
Its Heavenly Voice, she lingers long to hear it ; 
Lo, through the Valley of Despair, 
Her song has sung itself to prayer ! 



NAY, TOUCH THEM NOT. 



Ear have I wandered, and the silent way 
O'erpassed is strewn with life-thoughts, new and old ; 
Some half-remembered, like mute graves with mold 
And mosses mingled with the lichens gray ; 
Some vivid, young with life of yesterday ; 
And some deep, soulful-born, that fain would hold 
The vaster meanings of the spirit-world. 
Celestial-winged, nor kin with time or clay. 
These all are mine, and with them life and love ; 
And would I change them, new and old, or mar 
Or blur their vision in the memory ? 
Nay, touch them not, nor one dull dream remove. 
Each, like the heavenly orb of each still star, 
Forevermore gleams in its realm for me. 



LOVE-BOUND. 169 



LOVE-BOUND. 



I felt the scorn within her breast, 

And scorn, it burned within my own ; 
Her look ! I read it, and I guessed 

The bitter sentence in her tone. 
Not harsh^that silvery voice was pure 

And cold, I thought, as winter frost. 
Her eyes, in my gaze, seemed to lure 

Like false lights, to the seamen lost. 

Yet never beauty shone as hers. 

In that proud form and pallid face ; 
Earth has its peerless characters, 

But none could match her perfect grace. 
Unmoved, she like a statue stood ; 

She spoke in low and measured breath : 
" My dear sir, you are very good. 

But loveless hearts are worse than death. 

" I give you back this jewelled band, 

Its pledge renounce ; they're yours — what more ? 
You've kept your heart ; I claim my hand : 

Henceforth forget the love of yore." 
Henceforth forget ! Ah, vain her speech ! 

How mad my thought ! I turned at bay, 
And though she stood within my reach, 

She seemed the breadth of seas away. 



170 LOVE-BOUND. 

She trembled, all her nature thrilled, 

Spell-bound, like one rapt in a trance ; 
Her lips were colorless and stilled, 

And pain was written in her glance. 
Then, with untrammelled voice again, 

The color mounting to her cheek, 
She spoke : " You need not seek in vain ; 

Go, other hearts like mine are weak. 

'' If love is but a lightsome game, 

A fancy for an idle mood, 
Go, warm you by its fickle flame, 

Then break the heart that you have wooed. 
JBut know that love is heaven-born, 

A passion guarded by a law ; 
A rose defended by a thorn, 

A sacred thing to answer for. 

^' If you would claim it, you must wear 

It nobly ; not as gift of earth ; 
Its spirit you can never snare, 

And beauty is but half its worth." 
I heard the stinging words she spoke, 

A silence for a moment's pause 
Sealed up my answer ; then I woke ; 

I urged the secret of her cause ; 

" What venomed lips have lied to thee ? 
What false words, whispered to thine ear, 



LOVE-BOUND. lyt 

Have turned thy virgin love from me, 

To poison with a heartless jeer ? 
I know not ; let them cursed be. 

Some gossip from the baser born, 
Has wrought, through foulest perfidy. 

To blacken all the hopes of morn ! 

" Henceforth, since thy sweet faith has fled, 

What matter that our love is lost ? 
'Tis better that we never wed. 

Than pay its price at such a cost. 
'Tis better that we never wed. 

If every wind can bear a tale 
To shake the calm, and fill with dread 

Of angry storm, our love-lit sail ! " 

I saw the melting of her snow, 

I felt the throbbing of her heart. 
Love flamed her bosom with its glow, 

And bound us that we could not part ! 



172 NEWBURGH, OCTOBER l8, 1883. 



NEWBURGH, OCTOBER i8, 1883. 



I hear the bells ring out their mirth, 

In gladdening melodies, and clear, 
Breaking the stillness of the earth, 

And sending welcome to the year. 

The thundering cannon belch their fire 
From upland reaches near and far, 

And music breaks from trump and lyre. 
To soften the tumultuous jar. 

A hundred years ago, and peace 

Was shouted through a mourning land ; 

Men wept with joy that war should cease. 
Tear-blinded, clasping hand in hand. 

Long had the new land, prone, and wrung 

With dreary and despairing woe, 
Heard but the sadder requiems sung, — 

Still struggling with a deadly foe. 

Then hope died with each dying year 
Of waste, and shed no promised light ; 

Then faith was overcast by fear, 

And courage wrought through gloom and night I 



NEWBURGH, OCTOBER l8, 1883. 173 

The musket and the delving spade 

A desolating blight had dealt, 
War, war ! its desperate terrors made 

Their din of death and anguish felt. 

Ah, dear the victories that were won ! 

For every hero who was lost, 
A Rachel mourning for a son : 

A breaking heart to pay the cost. 

Then, life and treasure lent their all, 

And half a people nobly braved 
The martyr's destiny — to fall — 

That haply freedom might be saved. 

Ah, martyrdom indeed was borne, 
Where homely men, undaunted, died, 

Not knowing of the coming morn 
With all its fruits to them denied. 

Their ardent souls could not recoil. 

And through the torturing struggle bore 

Starvation and relentless toil. 

That earth might have one nation more. 

A hundred years, and here we crown 
Their valor with our meaner praise. 

Let, now, the reverence that we own 
Be written in our works and days ! 



174 A CHALLENGE TO WINTER. 



A CHALLENGE TO WINTER. 



Drift, drift, thou blustering sleet and snow^ 
And blow, thou trumpet-tempest, blow. 
Shrill whistle through the caverned night, 
To wake the hollow and the height : 
Blow, blow ! 

The winter's hoary crest is crowned ; 
The fountain-heads and lakes are bound ; 
The streamlets throb through fen and field,. 
Imprisoned in their icy shield : 
Ho, ho ! 

The grim north, through the star-lit sky. 
Shoots its pale spire-lights far and high, 
And thin and weird, the shadows trace 
Ghost-lines across the glittering space : 
Cold, cold ! 

What care I for the crazy winds. 
The storm-blast or the sleet that blinds ? 
Away, ye wandering fiends of wrath ! 
Pile, pile the hickory on the hearth : 
Bold, bold ! 



REST. 175 

Touch fire to its pent passion, cheer 
And challenge the dead frozen year, 
So heavenward shall the flaming dart 
Pierce Winter to its icy heart : 
Ha ! ha ! 

Then stir the wassail, heap the fire, 
Wake, drowsy pulse, and touch the lyre ; 
Let the wild love-song throb and thrill. 
To match the Arctic winds, and shrill : 
Hurrah ! 



REST. 



O banish work ! Undo the prison door 

That holds the busy brain to drudging care ! 
Has nature's largess no high gifts to share 
With weary souls ? The waves that wash the shore, 
The soft winds, soughing through the pines, the 
moor, 
The forest's stealthy trail, the rocky lair. 
The mountain peak, 'mid misty dreams of air. 
The lonely haunts, where rippling streams restore 
The echo of some matchless voice, and rhyme 

Perpetual music to the solitude, — 
Or tune their lyrics to the lover-time — 



176 POET OF EARTH. 

Can these not win us from the mortal feud, 
And turmoil of the burdened years, to leaven 
The earthly thought with some fore-rest of heaven ? 



POET OF EARTH. 



Oh, be not ether-borne, poet of earth ; 

Stretch not thy wings to such a cloudless height 

As ne'er to know the darkness of the night, 

As ne'er to feel the touch of grief or mirth 

That lives in human sympathy, whose birth 

Is longed for in this world of love and blight ; 

Thou, too, must drink of sorrow and delight. 

Must taste the joy of hope, and feel its dearth ; 

God's service lies not out of reach, and heaven 

Is found alone through lowly ministry ; 

Some souls there are whose dumb chords wait the 

breath 
Of other souls, divinely gifted, given 
To voice the deeper tones, and lead the way 
To immortality, through life and death ! 



GRANT. 177 



GRANT. 

OBIIT, JULY 23, I< 



I know not how to touch the chords 
For our great chieftain lying slain ; 
The sword that smote him bears no stain 

Of earthly battle, — 'twas the Lord's. 

What mighty conflicts he had manned ! 
Not fitfully, in frenzied haste. 
As tempests sweep with sudden waste, 

Then die along the desert strand ; 

But calmly, through tumultuous ways, 

While brave men blanched, he led the van, 
With spirit of a stalwart man 

Engraven on his Roman face. 

The troublous days and years moved by ; 

The courage of the people waned ; 

The nation's noble faith was strained. 
As victory seemed to droop and die ; 

But he, the dauntless, centred there, 

Commanding the heroic host, 

Invincible where needed most. 
At last moved forward, everywhere. 



178 PROPHETIC. 

Then swiftly dawned the morn of Peace, 
Triumphantly, from walls of fire 
That stirred the nation's wild desire, 

That shot their light across the seas. 

And from his lips so prone to wait 

Till words were deeds, a message went 
In great laconic lines, that meant 

A potence in the nation's fate. 

And now, bereft, the legions stand : 
All mute, as one with bended head, 
A nation mourns beside the dead. 

And silence fills the stricken land. 



PROPHETIC. 

The year, the year is passing — gone — 
Drearily cold the wind is moaning ; 

The hoar-frost crowns the fields forlorn ; 
The trees, with icy fruit, are groaning ; 

From ferny vale to mountain pine, 

Death has written its countersign. 

Time has touched with its fateful breath 
All the flowers that once were blooming ; 

Alas, the issues of life are death ; 

Light is lost in the shadowy gloaming ; 



SPIRITS ANEAR. 1 79 

Arch December, even so soon, 
Follows the happy ides of June. 

Lo, beyond the ominous sky. 

Hidden, the pulse of spring is beating ; 
Upward the burnished sun mounts high. 

Painting the heavens with golden greeting. 
Thrilling earth with its throbbing heart, 
Piercing her with its fiery dart. 

Out with thine idols turned to clay, 

Whate'er thou, Old Year, missed of bringing, 

Waits in the weal of the coming day. 

Waits in the heart of the year beginning. 

Ring, glad bells of the year to be ! 

Fulfil, O year, their prophecy ! 



SPIRITS ANEAR. 



Not a word is said ; we sit by the hour ; 

And the twilight fades, and the shadows fall. 
The perfume floats from the sleeping flower ; 

The birds have ceased to question and call. 

Not a word is said ; our lips, they are dumb ; 

Her form is veiled, in the darkness, from sight ; 
The pulses seem stilled, and the senses numb, 

Entranced by voices of nature and night. 



l8o PAST THE PORTAL. 

None other is here ; we two are alone ; 

No outward token to give or to take ; 
We gaze at the stars, and the fathomless zone, 

Till thoughts are deep with the fancies they wake. 

We murmur a song, and our voices blend ; 

We dream the same dreams, though we know it 
not ; 
Our spirits have learned the secret, to send 

Their messages each to the other's heart. 

No protest, no vow can strengthen the bond ; 

O meaningless words, when silence is dear ! 
The converse of love is sweeter, beyond 

The shallow of speech, to spirits anear. 



PAST THE PORTAL. 



Falls the shadow on my sight : 
Fade earth's glimmering spears of light ; 
Slowly, now, my vision, paling, 
Closes — all things outward failing — 
It is night ! 
It is night ! O night and sleep, 
Fill my soul with silence deep. 
Night and sleep ! 



PAST THE PORTAL. i8l 

I have never felt it so, 

In my slumbers here below ; 

Cold and still, heart-throbbing ceases : 
Strange ! my spirit life increases 
Its wild flow ! 
Is it night, and is it sleep 
Sways my being's upward leap 
Through the deep ? 

Fly the shadows ! Lo, I feel 
Rapture thrill ; and through me steal, 
All unfettered, dreams of longing — 
Swift emotions through me thronging — 
Lo I feel 
Grief depart, and earth's dull sense 
Take its flight ; O joy intense ! 
Whither hence ? 

Music ! aye, a thousand strains, — 
Frees me from my drudging pains, 
Stirs me, — wreathes about my spirit ; 
Now I feel it, breathe it, hear it ! 
Now it wanes — 
Now it echoes near and far. 
Floating on from star to star ; 
Near and far. 

O what matchless radiance falls 
On my soul, and inly thralls ! 



l82 PAST THE PORTAL, 

Bathes me in its passioned splendor, 
Clothes me in its robes of grandeur, 
Inly thralls ! 
Light and music ! Fly away 
Death, with these thou canst not stay, 
Fly away ! 

How ineffable is this ! 
Full and free I drink its bliss — 
In the heavenly ether flying. 
Winged to feel the faint winds sighing- 
Feel their kiss — 
Hear the eternal anthems sweep 
To the rhythm of the deep — 
Mighty deep ! 

Take me, bear me in thy might ! 
Flee, thou dark, discordant night ! 
Clouds, dissolve thy films of sorrow ; 
Spirits need not of thee borrow, 
They are light ! 
Sink, thou dregs of eddying dross ! 
Perish wild despair and loss. 
Perish dross ! 

Infinite ! I feel thy flow ; — 
Thy dim mystery I shall know, 
Thy unutterable spirit, dawning. 
Soon will crown the endless morning, 



THE SOUL OF ART. 1 83 

I shall know ! 
Cloud and shadow sink to night ; 
Angels flood Thy space with light ; 

All is light ! 



THE SOUL OF ART. 



The sculptor, forward-gazing, deemed 
That, sometime in a golden year, 

When art in him had touched the goal, 

When life had ripened in his soul, 
His hand might celebrate the seer. 

And carve the statue he had dreamed. 

The statue, " Beauty." Lo, he saw 
It, fancy-drawn within his thought — 

As he foretold, in curving line 

Of Grecian grace, its fair design — 

And day by day, though still unwrought, 

Beheld it fashioned without flaw, — 

Love-fashioned ; now it seemed complete, 
A child of passion, Venus-born ; 

The roseate hues of morning lent 

Their flesh-tints to his rapt intent. 

And his dumb soul went out forsworn 

To worship at his idol's feet. 



THE SOUL OF ART. 

Still, Still his hands reluctant wait ; 

The chisel by the untouched stone 
His skilful fingers held, until 
Some heaven-illumined sign should fill 

With deeper meaning than his own 
The thought his art would consummate. 

The years their circling courses traced : 
Mute as their rounds, his spirit changed ; 

More dimly shaped, within his mind. 

The breathless form that love divined. 
Until his fancy seemed estranged, 

His beauteous image half effaced. 

And Time, at last, his glowing heart 

Through softening grades of feeling led ; 

It fused his passions till they blent 

In sweet maturity, that lent 
A soul of harmony, and shed 

A gentler fervor through his art. 

Another beauty than of sense. 
Ideal — born of thought divine — 

The soul's foreshadowing of Heaven — 

Stole from his spirit, inward given. 
Like sainthood at the altar's shrine, 

Reflecting its pure radiance. 

And lo, a holier image rose 

From chastenings that his life had felt ; 



THE SOUL OF ART. 185 

For sorrow, once — aye, thrice — had cast 
Its darkness o'er him in the past — 

A darkness dense, wherein he knelt 
To calm the storm of deepening woes. 

And now the vision mastered him ; 

With patient chisel he expressed 
The form, the master shape, that grew 
Serene within his cloistered view — 

An image of his passion, blessed. 
Pure as the templed seraphim. 

To his grave face of marble came 
The voiceless song, the silent prayer. 

The hallowed look, the crystal well 

Of truth ineffable, to tell 

The character embodied there, 

As moulded by a sacred flame. 

Men paused and marvelled at the face ; 

Not fashioned from a fiery heart, 
To thrill the veins and die anon. 
But of celestial beauty drawn, 

Ennobling the noblest art. 
Prophetic of immortal grace ! 



NOTES. 



1. Nyack, lying on the western shore of the Hudson River, 
borders the " Tappan-Zee." The river is nearly four miles in 
breadth at this point, and the bells of Nyack, heard on the 
opposite shore, produce, across the waters, intonations of re- 
markable sweetness. 

2. Written on the death of General Cusler, slain, with every 
member of his command, July 25, 1876, in the Indian War of 
the "Black Hills." 

3. Addressed, before his death, to the late Frank A. Hillard, 
lamented for many beautiful qualities of mind and heart, and 
the possessor of a rare poetic genius. 

4. In " Wallenstein," Schiller has left the fate of his heroine 
in uncertainty, after she starts forth on her pilgrimage in 
search of her lover ; these lines imagine the sequel. 

5. Published in the Cambridge Memorial volume, 1882. 

6. Read on the occasion of the Centennial Celebration of 
Washington Irving's birth, held under the auspices of the 
" Irving Association," April 3, 1883, and published in the 
Irving Memorial volume issued in the same year. 



187 





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